Last year I attended a conference in which one of speakers suggested that utility computing was a far off subject (2012+). This I found mildly interesting because it was already becoming established, however the speaker's point was that large companies wouldn't take it seriously until that time.
So I was interested to read Joe Tucci's list of the top 7 priorities for 2008.
- Virtualization
- Storage
- Security
- VOIP
- Enterprise 2.0
- Software in the Cloud
- Green Computing.
Now if I look at somewhere like Fotango then each of these had become priorities some 2-6 years beforehand, for example the company has organised activities around an internal wiki since 2003/04.
This would be fairly normal as larger corporations tend to lag the smaller software companies. What is unusual is that this lag is normally considered to be around 7-10 yrs and I find it unlikely that there are companies who can say that the above list was their priority between 1998-2001.
So what has happened? Joe Tucci says that this list is "something to consider for anyone who contends that business technology moves too slowly."
Rather than looking at the speed at which technology moves, the really interesting question is whether the spread of technology is accelerating.
