Once a technology territory is settled the gold rush goes elsewhere.
This leaves reporters like myself in a constant state of unease. As soon as you understand one beat you're told to learn a new one, if you want to stay on the cutting edge.
What's true for people is true for companies as well. You need to have a play in the “next thing” and it's pretty evident the “next thing” is the Cloud. When I see someone working in open source these days, they look tired. When I see someone working in Cloud technology (even if they just moved from open source) they look wired. (I know. That analogy itself dates me.)
Microsoft's purchase of Skype today has to be a cloud play. Otherwise it makes no sense at all. They're turning Azure into a giant phone switch, which guarantees it a lot of traffic, and that revenue will help it continue scaling.
Google's response (and most analysts don't understand this as a response) is the launch of Google Music. Clouds can do everything any other computer technology can do – transactions, connections, storage. Microsoft scaled connections today, Google scaled storage.
It's all part of the “great game” that breaks out whenever a technology gets hot. It was true with the Internet, true with mobile, true with social, true with Cloud. You wind up with strange bedfellows. Suddenly Microsoft Azure is Apple's lifeline because Azure gives iCrap a “cloud strategy” even before users know they want one. And long before Apple can hope to deliver one.
It's a wave, one that we already know has infected the telcos, but also infects all the big vendors as well. You have to become a cheerleader for the Cloud, you have to have some Cloud stuff to push, a Cloud story you can tell at trade events, or suddenly you're nowhere.
As I've noted before, open source is an essential element in the Cloud. Clouds are by their nature shared infrastructure. They provide their own lock-in so open source is not a threat. Clouds are so scaled it's tough to move between them even if you've got identical technology platforms. But it's hard to see companies giving over their key infrastructure to the Cloud unless they feel that they could move if they had to, if only to their own Cloud. So open source and open standards become, in essence, one and the same.
If you're an open source vendor, selling either support or services to IT shops, then you must have a Cloud story. You need to quickly come up with a Cloud strategy and be able to tell that story at the next industry conclave. Or you're yesterday's newspaper. (What analogy will replace that, I wonder — last hour's newscast?)
For reporters, this becomes a sort of game. We're going to test those Cloud stories to see if there is some reality behind them, or if they are just stories, and we're going to be harsh. So as you tell your story you need to put some serious resources into making that story happen behind the scenes.
Which means if you consider yourself an open source expert, you need to change your business cards, learn a new vocabulary, and tap dance as fast as you can until you are conversant in the new game. This hopefully will get you into 2013 in one piece.
