Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Cloud Services Manifesto

OK here we go. To start with, a “Cloud Services manifesto” to look back on in future years.

Definition:

“The Cloud” = “The universe of all economic services”.

- Cloud Services are all-encompassing - we’re not just talking about web services here. Every economic good or service belongs in and can be exchanged in the Cloud.

- Cloud Services are what's important to the end user so that’s what we will talk about: “what” rather than “how”. Talk of ‘Cloud Computing’ is already backwards-facing.

- Cloud Services will be Darwinian in their evolution: in any particular service niche, ultimately “there can be only one”, since all Cloud Services will eventually be able to scale to 6.6 billion users (and counting). There will, however, be an ever-expanding number of niches.

- We are now at the early stages of when we use Cloud Services for all aspects of life and business. The economic and social implications of this change need to be surfaced and recognised.

- Cloud Services will make what was previously achievable faster, easier and cheaper until they are commoditised and effectively free.

- Cloud Services will make new things achievable faster, easier and cheaper to more people, businesses and geographies.

- Part of me (/my business/my organisation) will live in the Cloud from now on: the Cloud is an extension of a consciousness, an extension of a business, with increasing symbiosis and decreasing boundaries between each entity.

Of course, only time will tell how prescient these predictions actually are... ;-)