Once upon a time, and to the FAR FAR left, there was a big giant computer in some big room with beefy armed guards making sure no one got in. Mysterious things happened in that room, and somehow that mystery made it to our terminals so that we could enter data. That data made the companies we worked for run somehow, but we never really gave it much thought.
Transformation happens
Then came Provo, Utah. And it begat Novell. Novell was pretty cool - you could take stuff that only ran on those huge, expensive mystery machines and run them on a PC. Clever folks even figured out how to create large groups of terminals and using a very simple diskette with a driver could connect to all kinds of magic.
Novell dominated the "server" market for quite a while until the desktop came to the server, and Windows NT was born. The pendulum swung HARD to the right. These desktop computers became industrialized and millions of them made their way into the room that once contained a single monolithic computer. Computers found their way to every desk in every office in every company around the world. People starting buying computers for home. Companies started sending software to consumers in the mail so they could join the online revolution. They started chatting to each other across great distances using telephones to connect to the "internets" (or some such fanciness). You probably know the rest so I'll skip it, but that brings us to today.
Clouds on the horizon
The cloud, as an internet meme so cleverly describes it is "just someone else's computer". But truthfully, the advent of using someone else's computer to do work isn't new at all. It's been around since the mystery machines. We've been effectively using "someone else's computer" all along. We've all been using compute, storage, network capacity since the beginning of the modern computer age - and probably didn't know it. Think about this though: Cloud computing isn't a computer at all. Cloud is really a massive change in how we consume the huge compute capacity and new services that are enabled by these massive buildings full of carefully orchestrated "workload engines". When was the last time you thought about email? Not "read" email - but thought about what's behind your internet.com email address? It's someone else's computer, storage, network - all acting on your behalf (well - most of us but we'll leave the political commentary for someone else to tackle).
Swipe a credit card - someone else's computer. Deposit your paycheck - someone else's computer.
Turn your discarded coins into a coupon for cash - someone else's computer. Buy a lottery ticket - someone else's computer. Pay $243 for a cup of carefully brewed 5 shot grande latte with a light dusting of Madagascar fair-trade vanilla and a whisper of cinnamon poured over 1/2 skim, 1/2 whole milk steamed to a perfect 172 degrees - someone else's computer.
Get the point? Some of these things are so commonplace that we don't even consider them to be "computing" services. But these days, every facet of our lives is affected by a computer - someone else's computer.
The funny thing about pendulums. They never stop in the middle. If they do, they cease to perform the function they were put in place to perform.
The point
So, I'll get to the point. Transformation in the use of someone else's computer is happening at the speed of life. In fact, in some cases, it's happening faster. Did you know that 52% of the Fortune 500 company names from 2000 don't exist anymore? Still think transformation isn't happening?
Those who refuse to accept this transformation aren't doomed to the scrap heap of
My point is simple. Transformation means learning something you're not necessarily comfortable with. Transformation is a personal journey. That will expand beyond you to your peers, making it a workgroup journey. And so on... and so on... What you'll find is that transformation is contagious. Catch it - before you can't.
Isn't that the point of transformation?
Comments welcome.
/finis
No comments:
Post a Comment