A Brave New Internet

IBM and Google Collaborate on Cloud Computing. Has anyone heard what their relationship is about? I’d guess its about IBM making hardware for Google, not Google providing service for IBM. But, Google wants to sell On-Demand services to business. Maybe its about IBM helping Google form a business strategy to sell service to Enterprise business. How does IBM benefit from that? Sounds like it would take business away from IBM. Unless, IBM realizes its inevitable, and they’re reshaping their business at the same time, to sell data center equipment to Google, and Internet terminal equipment to Enterprise.

Whatever the reason, I take it as another clue that the world is changing. We’re living in the era the future history books will call the Information Revolution. Our ability to transmit data at the speed of light across the globe has been realized. Kind of like the discovery of electricity, followed by the mass application of electricity, became known as the Industrial Revolution. The era of mass application of the ability to transmit data at the speed of light will become known as the Information Revolution. Its radically changing the way we live, and they way we do business.

One of the massive swings we’re seeing is the shift in business from running its own mini data centers in colo facilities, to renting infrastructure from major providers. We’ve all heard SaaS and On-Demand services – this was the first big thing, and still growing. We’ll see more and more movement towards hosted service for applications like Email or Exchange, calendar, Customer Relationship Management, Project Management systems, Trouble Ticket systems, knowledge bases, and on and on. There is still a need for custom application development – for custom business needs. Enter Platform as a Service (PaaS). Examples of PaaS include Amazon’s AWS, SalesForce’s PaaS, bungeeconnect, Microsoft’s xRM 4.0 (sounds like MS is flirting with the idea). There are distinct differences between AWS and Salesforce/bungee/ms PaaS, though. Funny thing is I think of Amazon AWS as a true PaaS, but they don’t use that term. Another PaaS like concept is 3Tera’s AppLogic – a datacenter on-demand.

Its a brave new Internet.

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