I started in the IT industry (with a full head of hair) as a youthful 18 year old. During this time and with the addition of 27 further years within the now tech or rebranded cloud world I have seen lots of hyperbole and marketing enthusiasm for products concepts or services.
I sit here today (still in my prime I might add) and I hear words such as Uberisation or phrases such as ‘digital disruption’ or ‘being Ubered’. So let me take you on a journey back in time to the year 1999/2001 and lets see what has changed.
[easy-tweet tweet=”CTC’s @NeilCattermull looks at how tech hasn’t changed in the past 15 years” via=”no” hashtags=”cloud, tech”]
We all use Internet on mobile devices today and tablets. Yes we do but in 2000 I used my Compaq Ipaq and when I needed Internet on the go I used my Nokia with connection lead to dial into the internet.
We are truly mobile today. Hmm so we never used laptops back in the year 2000? I had an awesome Toshiba in those days…
Business will be conducted over the Cloud. Yes and the precursor to cloud was the Internet anyone remember the promises of the .com era? How the Internet companies will disrupt traditional retail forever. Some did, Amazon.com for instance but who remembers Value America or the other .com losers? My view is that cloud is just a repositioning of the platform. And lets not forget one big winner from this age Dell…
The Cloud is centralised computing. What was the Mainframe then? And did we not bring centralised computing services back with the Citrix Winframe product set? Weren’t Citrix and early forms of Microsoft Terminal services just a precursor to bringing Intel based centralised computing to a corporate audience?
Cloud is a recent development. So we never used services like Hotmail or Yahoo email in the year 2000? What about all those other services that allowed us to store files such as newsgroups or corporate portals?
We are in the midst of a new industrial revolution. Yes just the same as the .com era or who remembers the lunacy of the early promises offered by the ASP (application service providers) this was the first step into the SaaS or software as a service marketplace. The revolution in technology is nowhere near as hyped; nothing has radically changed the marketplace.
Social Networking is allows us to communicate like never before. So we never used MSN or Yahoo messenger for near real time communications? Is text messaging still not the predominant messaging platform?
The point of this article is to try to alleviate the concerns of traditional IT resellers, and those who wish to sell or broker cloud and SaaS services, but find the market confusing. Don’t worry your not alone.
[easy-tweet tweet=”The #technology space is always going to be full of hyperbole and tales of disruption” user=”neilcattermull” usehashtags=”no”]
The technology space is always going to be full of hyperbole and tales of disruption; the key to any evolution is to measure the impact whilst remaining calm.
Whilst there is no doubt that cloud has an impact on areas such as billing, security and application development, as a platform it represents a small fraction of the trillions in IT expenditure.
So my message is this, not a lot has radically changed in the last 15 years, if your thinking of adopting cloud services, take a deep breath ignore the marketing hype get informed and make your choices based on hard facts not cloudwash.
Neil Cattermull, Director of Cloud Practice, Compare the Cloud
Neil's focus is on developing cloud technology and big data. You can often find him advising CXOs on cloud strategy.