Best-selling author, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a brilliant book in 2000 called The Tipping Point – “the moment of critical mass, the threshold...” – the point in time when a series of smaller activities come together to create an unstoppable movement. Gladwell’s popular book describes how “ideas, products and messages spread like viruses do,” with their impact becoming broader and increasingly powerful as more people align with them.
The world of technology is filled with Tipping Points, where new applications and services start small, spread first by word-of-mouth, gain buzz and momentum as the media and outside world become aware of their value, and eventually explode and migrate into mainstream, everyday applications. If you’ve seen the movie, The Social Network, which describes the founding and rapid rise of Facebook, you’ll fully relate to the concept of technology tipping points.
As we prepare to enter a new year, I believe we are on the verge of yet another tipping point, one involving the Cloud. When this one reaches critical mass, the Cloud will become main-stream, and user adoption will explode delivering on the promise of the many pundits who project cloud-related spending in the tens of billions of dollars in the next few years (e.g. “Demand for cloud computing services will grow at more than 20 per cent over the next four years, reaching $US150 billion by 2014 – three times the market’s current size – according to Gartner).
What makes me think that the Cloud is at its tipping point? For one, respected bloggers like David Linthicum are making intriguing predictions about what we might see in 2011 – including a bold prediction that Oracle buys Salesforce. Read David Linthicum’s Nov 29th, 2010 blog:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/oracle-buy-salesforcecom-and-other-cloud-predictions-384
It’s not so much Linthicum’s prediction that intrigues me, but the companies which he’s addressing in his prognostications. Oracle is a major player, and when the big guys start to move into the Cloud and industry consolidation looms, things start to get serious. Mr. Linthicum also predicts that the US Government will “get its Cloud act together” in 2011 – a sure sign that the Cloud has arrived in my view (governments aren’t exactly “early adopters”).
It’s not only leading bloggers like David Linthicum who are seeing big changes in 2011 when it comes to the Cloud. Others, like Kevin Komiega are writing about how giants like IBM are staking its claim in the Cloud. Read Kevin Kemiega’s Nov 2010 blog:
So, Oracle’s there, IBM’s there...and if you’ve been watching television lately you will have noticed that the word Cloud is appearing in ads put out by none other than Microsoft. And Cisco is right there with them with their announcement earlier today of a Cisco/BMC Software cloud infrastructure partnership.
All the big boys have joined the party.
The Cloud has reached its tipping point.
Get ready for a wild ride in 2011 and beyond.
ABOUT ME
Joshua Geist is Founder and CEO of Geminare Incorporated, a leading provider of turnkey business continuity, server replication and data protection solutions, and innovator of the Cloud “Recovery as a Service” model. A solution junkie at heart, Joshua lives, breathes and dreams all things DR Cloud-related and loves nothing better than to hear a story about how another customer experienced first-hand the tremendous value inherent in the technology that Geminare created.
Joshua lives in Toronto, with his lovely wife Liane and their three beautiful daughters, Samantha, Chloe and Alexa – with a combined age of 8! Suffice it to say that between introducing the world to Geminare’s RaaS and raising a family, Josh is a very busy guy but always seems to be reachable at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or you can follow on Twitter @CloudRecovery.
