So who is the Edison of today? Or should I say, who will be the Edison this next era of the utility network? All the big guys are going after it; Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Yahoo, OpSource and just about anyone else attempting to create an "ecosystem" of partners running on their software, computing, storage or marketplace platform.
I'm in the process of reading Nicholas Carr's book The Big Switch: Rewiring The World, From Edison To Google. An exceptional read, btw, a book I very highly recommend. My buddy and blogger friend Sam Van Ryder pushed me to read the book. Carr's the guy who wrote the controversial book Does IT Matter?. The Big Switch is all about the move to utility and cloud computing, SaaS, on demand software and why corporate data centers will be displaced by utility IT software and services. I can't help but think about how Live Mesh and Microsoft's other software services initiatives are really a fight for survival in a post-Gates Google era of software and computing.
Carr talks about how power generation was something that individual businesses and manufactures did for themselves a little over a century ago. But as power generation began centralize and became much more cost effective, it no long made economic sense for businesses to own power generation capabilities. Instead, they bought it off the grid. But one of the initial battles was over transmission standards, AC vs DC. Here's where Edison won out, and became "the guy" who effective built out the grid that became the electric "network" we use today.
So who is or will be the Edison of today? Or will we have to go through a plethora of vendor centric platforms, whether it be Google's narrow software platform, LAMP, Microsoft .NET, etc., before a true interconnected grid emerges. Other than announcing hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint, Microsoft's not disclosed much about Microsoft in the utility computing or utility software world. Sure we have Windows Live but much of Live is about cloning Google's search and ad generation revenue capabilities for Microsoft, truly a catch up strategy against Google, and creating basic Live apps that are net-connected for publishing data. This catch up game is the huge reason Microsoft really needs the Yahoo hostile takeover acquisition to happen.
But Microsoft's been more forthcoming and shown some thought leadership in other areas, specifically Live Mesh. One of the things I find very compelling about Ozzie's mesh strategy is the element of synchronization. No one else is really talking data synchronization across all the devices you use, and I think this capability is crucial in a connected world of information and software. Cloud-based utility computing and storage are one thing, but having a strategy for getting data on and to the right device could be something Microsoft jumps ahead of the industry on. That's not the kind of innovation we are used to from Microsoft, but maybe things are different in the Ozzie era of Microsoft.
How's that old Chinese proverb go? May you live in interesting times. I find these time very interesting,
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Nick Carr riled up Network World readers
Network World's review of The Big Switch generated a really heated discussion here, as he tried to tell everyone that sooner or later, enterprise IT would be dead. He came to a live Network World chat, too, where he explained what he thought would/wouldn't die, career-wise, too. See: The future of IT? It's not all bad news, Nicholas Carr says
Here's the original book review: The IT department is dead, author argues
Live Mesh - The Race To Become Web 2.0's Next Edison
My recollection of the book ("The Big Switch") and of other historical notes are that Edison was on the wrong side of the argument (he favored DC), and that it was Samuel Insull, Edison's clerk, who promoted the AC model that became the power utility model of today. Insull took over the reigns at Chicago Edison, bought up other distributors, and developed a pricing model that made electrification costs cheaper as utilization increased, and therefore attractive to the consumer.
Those organizations that strive to be the next Edison may be on the wrong track, focusing on generation rather than distribution and pricing. Businesses love variable, scalable operating costs rather than fixed investments in computing infrastructure. Better to be the next Insull.
Edison paved the way and proved the business model
Edison's true genious was in creating the mass distribution model for electricity (yes, DC current), turning the econmics around such that distribution changed the paradigm for creating electric power.
Edison's and Westinghouse's battle over DC and AC could be a metaphor for the vendor specific cloud platforms we see today, such as a world driven by Google, Microsoft or Force.com's technology choices. Some are a packaging of open technologies, like Google, and others are proprietary or have proprietary software built on open software.
Will we see a winner like AC emerge as the dominant platform? Or will it be a duality of technologies like we have today: AC is at the edge and high-voltage direct current (HVDC) for long distant transmission.
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss