Storm Clouds ahead ~ The battle for the cloud!

I just read a really interesting opt-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. In the article Andy Kessler gives a very good overview of the upcoming "The War for the Web" as well as breaking down why the Microhoo! murder... (merger) was a bad idea.

Quote

"Why the rush to pay billions for Yahoo? The simple (and wrong) answer was that adding Yahoo's 20% Web search market share to Microsoft's 10% meant that it could compete against Google's 60% share. Technology changes too fast for that to make sense except on paper."

Another interesting, if not completely obvious point he makes;

"At the moment, neither Google nor Microsoft, or anyone else, has nailed down cloud, edge, speed and platform. All the loosely coupled electronic devices in our pockets need to work together seamlessly with Facebook applications in the cloud."

No shit. You don't need to be our favorite cloud guru Nick Carr to figure that one out, but for some reason most enterprises can't seem to get their collective heads around the use of cloud technology.

He goes on to say;

"Programs run anywhere these days – on your desktop computer, on servers in data centers, on your iPod, cellphone, GPS, video game console, digital camera and on and on. It's not just about beating Google at search, it's about tying all these devices together in a new end-to-end computing framework."

Ahmen brotha. The cloud is about a ubiquity in the users computing experience. The cloud is about a seamless transition regardless of platform, device or application. Those who realize this will prosper, or at the very least do a little better then their competition.

Andy also does a fantastic job of breaking down the fundamental aspects of the cloud.

- The Cloud. The desktop computer isn't going away. But as bandwidth speeds increase, more and more computing can be done in the network of computers sitting in data centers - aka the "cloud."

- The Edge. The cloud is nothing without devices, browsers and users to feed it.

(Think Akamai, Limelight,. The Edge & CDN providers as well as p2p)

- Speed. - Speed. Once you build the cloud, it's all about network operations.

(At the end of the day cloud is a about the user experience regardless of application. People use Google cause it just works. You never hear, Is Google down? )

- Platform. ...Having a fast cloud is nothing if you keep it closed. The trick is to open it up as a platform for every new business idea to run on, charging appropriate fees as necessary.

(That's why we give away our Enomalism platform. Personally I'd rather use apache over IIS and I think our users agree. The same principals apply to cloud as a platform)

Read the whole article here: http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2008/05/wsj-the-war-for.html