Thinking, "this might solve our interoperability woes", seems to be the classic motivator behind big companies' interest in every tech trend. It was there with

Thinking, "this might solve our interoperability woes", seems to be the classic motivator behind big companies' interest in every tech trend. It was there with Big Data ("Who cares? Just throw it in a data lake!"). It was there with NoSQL ("Who cares? Just throw it in a document store!") It was there with XML ("XML is just one format, right?") It was there with COM/CORBA/AppleScript/etc ("The vendor can make their own data readable!") I wouldn't be surprised if, millennia ago, there were organizations trying to figure out how fluted spear heads might solve their communication woes.