What Do I Think Is The Next Big Thing

Sitting here in flooded South Florida as Isaac moves on towards New Orleans.  Thank goodness my electric and internet access stayed on during the storm, unlike many of my neighbors. But the good news is the storm has given me some down time to think.  I have been thinking about what an interesting time we live in. Yes, Mother Nature can still unleash her fury and we are virtually powerless. At the same time it is a great time to be alive.  

We are seeing a generational change in technology. I have seen only two like this in my lifetime. The first was the personal computer revolution and the second was the coming of the Internet.  I think we are now coming to a third which is move away from PCs to Internet connected devices and the apps they run. I have spent a lot of time with some of my friends thinking and talking about what opportunities this creates.. About what is the next “big thing”.

We think there is a real opportunity in providing apps to mobile devices.  The back ends of these apps will be stored in the cloud. Some in big public clouds like Amazon, but many will require specialized platforms that Amazon won’t offer.  

Back in 1998 I was involved in a company called Interliant. We were an early entrant into what was then called ASPs or Application Service Providers. Basically we offered applications like Lotus Notes, Peoplesoft and Oracle over the net to enterprises. Along with these apps we also offered security (managed firewalls) and many of the other pieces required for these apps to run and be delivered.  Of course in retrospect, we were probably to far ahead of the timeline for this.  Bandwidth was not as abundant or as cheap as it is now.  The platforms to host these apps were not what they are today. Virtualization allowing for scalability was in its infancy.  Also most workers were still chained to desks. WAN technology left a lot to be desired, even VPNs were still dodgy. So while there was a will to do this, the way was not really there yet.

Today it is a different story. Everyone is connected to the net just about all the time. We access information via phones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, TVs in addition to our regular computers. More than that between virtualization and big data solutions, it is possible to do these apps on grand scales.

So for me the opportunity is in developing these apps or in developing the infrastructure to host and deliver them. With my history in web hosting and the early ASP market, I naturally look at the infrastructure opportunity as one I understand best. I think there is tremendous opportunity there to make something happen That is where the next big thing is.

Are you a company that plays in that area? Do you agree with this?  Would love to hear from others what they think about it.  You never know, maybe we can do something together.