Friday 10 September 2010
The iPhone is a fantastic platform that transforms using technology that has been around for quite a while into a more useful experience. The iPhone converges many technologies and capabilities under a single umbrella and changes the way in which people interact with their data and other people. While I have often grouped Cloud Computing with the consumerization of IT (and the iPhone as it’s most visible example) together in concert in my disruptive innovation presentations, I never really thought of them as metaphors for one another.
Hoff goes on to note several specific parallels: our willingness to be locked in to specific providers to gain the iPhone’s benefits; our admiration of those who work to innovate beyond proprietary boundaries through jailbreaks and “unapproved” application marketplaces; the desperate scramble by a variety of vendors to attach their star to the iPhone brand; and the constant rate at which features appear and evolve. You have to wonder if Hoff shouldn’t have included the Google Android in his analogy, as Steve Oberlin suggested on Twitter. There are choices in the cloud space–it’s not dominated by any one vendor, though Amazon may be the Apple of the cloud today.
I’m generally sold. I wonder what you think. Will cloud computing see massive adoption as more and more people (and companies) are seen benefiting from related services, and more and more compelling applications and services are available from the cloud? Or are both just trendy subjects that will eventually give way to more traditional technologies and getting things done?
