Awhile back my colleague Sam organized a “Cloud Forecast 2009″ podcast, which was a lot of fun. Enough fun that we’re investing a bit in new audio gear and will turn out some more installments … we’ll keep you posted.
In any case, the occasion of that recording got me to thinking a bit, and with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays now well behind us, and the de-facto SuperBowlholiday looming (I was really glad to see Kurt Warner earn another shot at the title – the 2000 SuperBowl win by the Rams remains one of my favorite sports memories), I finally realized my theme for 2009, one that had been gnawing on me for some time and is now very clear:
I am excited.
I am excited about cloud computing, including progress in everything from virtualization to real-big-public-clouds with cool new storage facilities, from billion-core processors to dirt-cheap multi-terabyte drives … honestly, who can’t get excited about a terabyte for less than $100?
Even the debate over the shape, color, texture, and full extent of cloud computing is energizing. Of course, my favorite part of the debate is that it’ll be sorted out in the marketplace, and I like our chances … after all, does anyone need cloud-enabled applications?
I think so.
I am particularly excited about the level of market awareness amongst all sorts of folks that we’re talking with, about real customers doing real stuff with real clouds – public, private, and a mixture of both.
Agree with me or not, the development of private clouds is a great boon to enterprises and government agencies everywhere, and looks to be terrific for us in 2009.
Closer to home I am excited about some really cool stuff that we’re building into our products here at Appistry. Great stuff, and can’t wait until we can start talking more …
Heck, I am even excited about my new mouse! (every once in a while Microsoft does something really great, and this is one of them).
Critical Mass
There are a lot of individual reasons to be excited, true enough. Yet the real reason to be excited runs far deeper.
After years and years and years of tons of folks making progress in all things computing, slavishly building bigger and better nets; faster and cheaper processors, beau coup rotgut-cheap drives, processors, and more; fundamentally new business models that enable some serious capital-expenditure-avoidance; cloud-friendly ways to build scalable, reliable apps; and much, much more … I think that we’re finally here.
We’ve reached critical mass.
Critical mass as in all of computing is going to go Klein-bottle on us, turning inside out in many dimensions, imitating the caterpillar and coming out as something fundamentally new on the other side.
All of the right factors have come together … economic, technological, conceptual … probably even cultural.
Time to help create the Fourth Age of Computing, time to see just what is possible.
Like I said, this is a great time to be in the computing biz.
Butterfly image courtesy of The Butterfly House, a really cool contrast to the prevailing mainstream of a Midwestern winter … plus it’s close to where I live. If you’re ever in St. Louis, please go enjoy the Butterfly House. If I see you, I’ll buy you a beer!
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I too share your excitement.
What I am really anxious for is what will be there after the clouds cool and form new streams. Cloud Stroage is just cheeper, better storage right now. What I am really drooling for are providers to start offering tools and resources to direct these clouds.
Not just mash ups of feeds, but true cross pollination of willing participant’s data.
In biology, it’s called hybrid vigor…
In digital:
Two dimensional photo = just a picture
Two coordinates = just a latitude and longitude
Those two innocuous pieces of data put together form a richness of information that garners an emotional response from pretty much anyone that experiences it.
Think about the first time you saw Street View… You knew it was possible but to see it executed… it is awe inspiring.
Clouds that start to offer or provide tools for the crowds to herd that data into new forms will really show us how much we don’t know. And not just useful data. Stupid novelty data too. Playing an audio file and your music player pushes text to you saying “Did you know: This song uses patterns that match the ring growth of a Brazilian Cherry Tree?”
New art-forms arising from the ability to measure these trivial pieces of data… then we start seeing a genre of music based tree ring growth patterns. Thats an absolute absurd extremity obviously, but it is happening right now with very little digital influence. Take for instance the popular “Dark side of the moon” + “Wizard of Oz” sync. It spawned tons of other entertaining combinations of music and cinema.
Dare I coin them as “Smart Clouds” ?
A left outer join of societal consciousness.
All in all, it excites me to be on cusp of a renaissance. Maybe when we have the ability to compare everything to everything we’ll see that nature isn’t as chaotic as it appears and the caterpillar’s metamorphosis isn’t an accident.
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