I've never been a great fan of top ten lists, however since it appears fashionable I thought I'd have a go. So, here are my top 10 most influential thinkers to the cloud in order of priority:
- Douglas Parkhill: For predicting the entire field and writing the exceptional book "The Challenge of the Computer Utility" (1966)
- Joseph Schumpeter: For providing a basic economic framework which explains why cloud computing should enable further innovation through creative destruction (1942)
- Herbert Simon: For providing a basic economic framework which explains why cloud computing should accelerate further innovation through componentisation (1973)
- William Stanley Jevons: For outlining why cloud computing won't reduce overall IT expenditure (1865)
- Leigh Van Valen: For providing in "a new evolutionary law" a framework to explain why you wouldn't have choice over cloud computing (1973)
- Tim O'Reilly: For signposting the cloud computing future with the concept of infoware and highlighting the role of the internet and open source in this (1999)
- Everett Rogers: For postulating that diffusion and maturation of a technological innovation results in increased information about the technology and therefore reduces uncertainty about the change. A key cornerstone of the idea of commoditisation (1981)
- Paul Strassmann: For demonstrating that there was no correlation between IT spending and business value, hence showing that not all IT is the same and that some was little more than a cost of doing business i.e. it had become more of a commodity (1990s)
- Nick Carr: For showing that ubiquity was the key to diminishing strategic value in business and providing the crucial link to explain commoditisation (2003)
- John McCarthy: For being the first person to publicly state the idea of utility computing (1961)
