Nicholas Carr's new book
Nicholas Carr's first book "Does IT Matter" (rightly) raised a ruckus. I hope his new book, "The Big Switch" is as provocative as his first. Early indications are that it is.
From what I can tell, it describes the evolution of IT from in house operations to a utility. Companies that have been leading us up the SaaS path (SalesForce, Google et al) are likely to benefit, while the incumbents need to think hard and come up with a compelling strategy to stay relavent.
An excerpt -
"The entire computing industry is going to be turned on its ear. There are a whole lot of big tech companies - Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and many others - that have made fortunes selling the same pieces of hardware and the same software programs to thousands of different customers. As computing turns into a utility and systems begin to be shared, a lot of those sales are going to dry up. Instead of buying new computers, companies will just subscribe to various software services served up online for a low monthly fee. Most of today’s computer giants see this transformation coming, and they’re scrambling to remodel themselves to compete in the new world. Some will adapt successfully. But some are going to fail. And new utility companies - companies like Google and Salesforce.com and even Amazon—are already moving in to take their place."
The million dollar question is, of course, how fast will this be adopted by enterprises. Early adopters (like Arizona State University's CIO's adoption of gmail as a standard) are proving that the utility model does work. Microsoft, predicitably, seems to to be pooh-poohing the trend, while Google, again predictiably, is gung-ho about it.
How long do you think it will take for enterprises to adopt this utility model? Will it be a full scale utility model or somewhere in between (e.g. see Microsoft's Software + Services play)?
