Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

Preface

In the course of human history, there have been a number of bona fide revolutions in the interdependent arenas of technology, society, religion, economics, and politics: flint tools, money, writing, agriculture, democracy, printing, steam power, capitalism, mass production, telephony, and electricity, to name a few. We are 65 or 70 years into one such revolution—the information age—which has permeated every corner of the earth and beyond—from video games to war games to baseball games, and from first-world stock markets to third-world fish markets, to out-of-this-world interstellar probes.1 Oh yes, and musical greeting cards, talking dolls, and intelligent thermostats too.2

Does the advanced age of this advanced age signal impending retirement? Some argue that “the opportunities for gaining IT-based advantages are already dwindling,”3; however, this sounds suspiciously similar to alleged pronouncements, such as “everything that can be invented has been invented” or “there is a world market for maybe five computers.”4

The revolution is accelerating, not slowing.

Technologies such as quantum computing, digital electro-holographic displays, brain-computer interfaces, natural-language interaction via speech-to-text and semantic processing, homomorphic encryption, and new electronic components such as HP’s nanoscale memristor, Intel’s three-dimensional chips, and on-chip optical interconnects are still in their infancy. Innovative cognitive computers are now being designed ...