One of your colleagues comments that software is the ultimate key to project management success how would you respond?

A software only enhances the speed and accuracy of what man can do. If there is no manual process that you can automate, the software is unlikely to be a good solution. And as regards to project management, there are many disciplines within project management that have been automated such as Critical Path Scheduling. It again depends on how good you model the physical problem to make managerial sense.