Two Disruptions for the Price of One
We stand at the beginning of a Cambrian explosion of new business models, driven by the colliding disruptions of cloud computing and mobile ecosystems.
A conversation last week between Randy Bias and mobile analyst/Asymco founder Horace Dediu maps out how this diversity of new business models will evolve. Hosted at 5by5, Randy and Horace discuss the emergence of the “super platform” that is making it all possible. The first 20 minutes or so sets the table, with a discussion of how cloud computing and mobile ecosystems fit the definition of disruption theory. Then, Randy and Horace dig in:
- Enterprise hardware vendors are facing big challenges because their legacy computing model is at odds with the way web-scale clouds are being built to support emerging mobile ecosystems.
- Web-scale solutions are simple, and simplicity – in the hardware, architecture, stacks, networking – is critical to designing large systems that can be cost-effectively supported.
- Google operates as many as 10,000 physical servers with one employee. You can’t do that without a radical new approach to data center architecture.
- Apple, Android and other mobile device platforms are defining the post-PC era because of their ability to collect user-level data and take it to a cloud-based backend where it is aggregated and analyzed. Then, data can be fed into a wealth of new application concepts that offer previously impossible benefits at very low cost to users.
- A look at how we’ve shifted from a hardware-centric view of the world (hardware availability) to a platform-centric view (ecosystems) to a super-platform-centric view (ecosystems enabled by cloud). Examples include iOS, Silk browser, Siri, Facebook, and Android. Users extract new value from trading personal data for aggregate knowledge.
- Net-centric business models take advantage of aggregated data from users to provide them with new and very compelling ways to understand the world they live in and interact with it. The Quantitative Self Movement and other crowdsource apps are examples of powerful concepts that were not possible before powerful edge devices connected to web-scale cloud.
- This, coupled with voice, location-based services, augmented reality and situational awareness, puts us on the front end of an explosion of new app and business model possibilities.
- What do mobile network operators bring to the table that’s more valuable than AWS? A global footprint. Ownership of the IP backbone. Ownership of mobile network. OSS/BSS (billing system) integration. Low latency.
Randy and Horace conclude with a discussion of the utility business model and how IT organizations are adapting their thinking to embrace it.
Listen in on their conversation and check out Horace’s post, then tell us how you see the “twin disruptions” unfolding.
This entry was posted in Cloud Computing and tagged 5by5, Asymco, aws, Cloud Applications, commodity, Horace Dediu. Bookmark the permalink.
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