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These companies don't want to be seen to offer technologies that have become as ubiquitous as power or railroads. They may embrace the vision of utility computing on the one hand, but they will argue that underneath the veneer of utility-style computing the individual elements in their portfolio are still seeing radical innovation. The gravy train of upgrades to new versions, market capitalizations, even executive compensation schemes are all tied into the notion that technology companies are ultra-innovative, high-tech, bleeding-edge, paradigm-shifting thought leaders. If Sun, or BEA, or even Microsoft are considered to do little more than shift commodity items, the game is up.

"Commodification" is a dirty word in our industry. I've always been less that sure why. The above excerpt from this article makes it a bit clearer: if something's a commodity, the mere fact that it exists (that it's been invented and produced by you) is irrelevant because there's so many other vendors for it. That is, a commodity-thing cannot be sold on it's features alone. Something beyond the mere utility and functionality of the product has to be the selling point, or, at least, the tie-breaker between your product and all the others.

This seems like one of the main points of Free Prize Inside, which itself, makes a whole lot more sense coupled with the above. The first half of a talk by Don Norman (Mr. The Design of Everyday Things) goes over this concept too.