I remember attending a Hewlett-Packard meeting for industry analysts in the early 1990s and hearing HP proudly declare that it was becoming a software company. Software had turned into a stronger driver of revenue in the computer industry than hardware, and HP management had realized that it had to make the shift to sustain its growth. I raised my hand and asked Lew Platt, HP’s president at the time, how much of overall revenue he anticipated would come from software within five years. His answer: by the end of the decade, about 10 percent.