“If you control your factories, you control your quality; if you control your distribution, you control your image.”

– Bernard Arnault

The above quote captures a similarity between luxury goods and top software companies.

Leading software companies want to employ the best software engineers, product managers etc to be able to build the highest quality products. And they want to have great sales organisations to control positioning in addition to driving sales short-term.

The value of great in-house development and sales is clear when contrasting that with organisations that rely on outsourced software development firms (a.k.a. IT services) and sell through intermediaries or partners.

Software is more of a premium than luxury good, but controlling development and distribution is the way to go.