As regular readers here know, the Cloud isn't a place, it's a technology. It consists of three basic layers:
- Infrastructure — The basic operating framework, what makes it work. Amazon's EC2 is a working cloud infrastructure. Open source projects like OpenStack are designed to replicate what this does and make it generally available.
- Platform — Think of this as the stack's Windows, as opposed to the Linux plumbing that may lay beneath it. Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform, sold as a service. VMWare has been building an open source cloud platform with its Cloud Foundry (right).
- Services — Software that actually does something. What the customer sees. Salesforce.com is a cloud service. Facebook and all those other social networks are cloud services. Services is where the money is.
Once you see the structure of the cloud, VMWare's purchase of Sliderocket makes sense. (And Yahoo's decision to spin out its Hadoop team makes no sense.)
Sliderocket is a presentation tool. Like PowerPoint in the cloud. It runs alongside Zimbra (which VMWare bought last year), which is e-mail for the cloud. What VMWare is building, then, is simply Office in the cloud, something that can compete more directly with Microsoft's entire stack.
A lot of people are going to call this brilliant, and it is logical. But the future doesn't lie with basic services like Microsoft Office, the tools used by people working in cubicles. It lies with customer-facing applications like Facebook, with tools used by ordinary people.
Give people stuff that's intuitive enough not to need a manual, or any documentation. Make it as compelling as possible, with all the bells-and-whistles the modern presentation layer can offer. Give it away or sell it for a pittance. That's where the money is.
As I observed while watching dangerous thunderstorms sweep across my front porch last night, the money is up where the lightning is. All you'll find on the bottom layers is creative destruction.
