Forget the News — Cloud Creeps Over Microsoft and Intel

Posted by on Jul 14, 2010 in Back Office, Blog | 2 comments

Call it a case of “Ailing Giants Force Their Way to the Future.” Microsoft this week embraced cloud computing. Intel reported record sales driven by demand for more powerful hard drives. It’s like Carnegie and Rockefeller planning 22nd century space travel. Does the future want or need them?

True, it’s good for IT and the economy that larger enterprises are back in the game and opening their purses to replace worn out desktops. I guess. Never mind that half of the PCs are junk after a year or two and burden companies with heavy maintenance costs. CIOs know this and are simultaneously trending toward disposable netbooks. Looked at in this light, Intel’s breath of fresh earnings air is more like a last gasp.

The real buried news in Intel’s earnings announcement is the other revenue driver: sales of chips to data centers, where the brunt of tomorrow’s serious business communications activities — including cloud computing — are rapidly migrating. Consider, as an example, that remote electronic trading posts (“dark pools”) now control 80% of all equities transactions, relegating traditional stock exchanges to window dressing.

That, in similar scenarios replicated by a thousand industries, is the way the entire business world is headed. Wake up.

Instead of boo-hooing about the recession and grasping at every hopeful market signal, see financial disasters as the healthy destruction of the antiquated. Something much better is on the way.

Don’t get too jazzed about netbooks. They’re just the razor. Private, end-to-end fiber optic networks connecting data centers that support financial, industrial, media, social media and all other business activity — and the BSS/OSS systems that track and bill for all this high margin activity — they’re the blade where serious money will be made.

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  • http://iPad2Announcement.com Gavin Havir

    I am really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a great blog like this one today..

  • kateschackai

    Hi Gavin; thanks very much! Glad to hear you found the post helpful.

    On the theme, this is actually a customer WordPress theme that we had designed professionally. There are some terrific paid themes out there, but sometimes it pays to go your own way. :)