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It is rare indeed for a photograph to tell a dramatic story. But even so, every now and again, one jumps out. Two taken in recent weeks qualify for inclusion in that slim volume, the book of Great IT Photographs.

One of them featured on the cover of last month's issue. It showed Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, on stage with Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft on the occasion of the signing of their recent 'peace agreement'. This rapprochement came as a huge surprise to almost everyone, and followed 15 years of public and apparently bitter antipathy between the fiercely 'open' Sun and the determinedly 'proprietary' Microsoft.

What made this one unofficial photo so revealing was the way in which Ballmer appeared dominant and aggressive, while McNealy looked haunted and uncomfortable. This was an alliance in which money - Microsoft's money, to be specific - had been the peacemaker. At Microsoft's headquarters, the deal would have been greeted as a tactical step forward, but down at Sun, it was met with public dissent and resignations. Had this been politics, then a splinter group would already have been formed.

The other photograph was equally revealing. It featured in Fortune magazine, and showed Darl McBride, the CEO of SCO, draped in a huge computer print-out detailing, in diagrammatic form, the 30-year history of the Unix operating system - which is, of course, now most commonly packaged in the form of the open source operating system, Linux. What the photograph could not show, but what those of us who have covered the 'Unix wars' over the years know, is that almost every connected line on the diagram represented a tactical move, sometimes an alliance, sometimes a betrayal; often, the line represented a multi-million dollar investment; but only rarely did it mean a better, more reliable or stable product for the customer.

Were Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft photographed with a diagram of the Windows lineage, the paper would be marked with one smooth line, perhaps with the odd kink in it every few years. They might even put it into evidence in their regulatory battles, arguing that smooth development benefits customers more than internecine wars in the open community.

But it is perhaps most revealing to put the two photos side by side, for they are really both about the same story - a story that has reached a critical point. Take a look across the industry, and it soon becomes clear that a series of remarkable pronouncements have been made. Microsoft has announced new co-operative technical alliances with arch enemies Sun and Oracle, as well as with SAP, which itself is opening up its whole product line after years of being guarded and proprietary. Sun may go further, suggesting it will turn its lucrative Solaris operating system over to open source; an IBM executive recently confided to Information Age that he might do the same with parts of WebSphere. Meanwhile, BEA Systems has introduced free, open source software that will enable software developed for its application server to run on rival systems, and vice versa.

Why now? Open standards are an enabler, but not the cause. And the reason almost all the suppliers give - that they are responding to customer demand - is perhaps no more than half true. This explanation easily translates into the more convincing but no more enlightening "this will help us to sell more products and services, or to charge more for them".

So why are the technical barriers being pulled down? Back to a military metaphor: Armies usually lay down their arms for one of two reasons: either one side has won, or it can achieve its objectives by peaceful means. The software industry has reached a point where a handful of suppliers have effectively won - and the rest must work out co-existence strategies.

Three of the winners in particular - IBM, SAP and Microsoft - can afford to take risks, to open up and even to allow their competitors technical breathing space. They have reached the stage that IT marketing guru Geoffrey Moore calls 'Main Street' - the point where they can feast off their dominance for decades.

Other companies - Sun, BEA and Oracle, for example - have preached co-operation and openness for a decade or more, but they have all protected their proprietary fiefdoms to a certain degree. Now, they too are becoming more open and cooperative. It might be good for customers, but they also have no choice: technical co-operation, openness and open source, along with guaranteed interoperability, has become a precondition of survival. And as McNealy's gloomy face showed, that may mean a certain loss of control.