I am writing a book on cloud service models and have been real busy interviewing architects, C-level executives and founders of both cloud based companies and companies rearchitecting legacy applications to take advantage of the cloud. I have talked with IaaS providers, PaaS providers, SaaS providers, B2C plays, B2B plays, 20 year old companies and stealth startups. I attended several meetups in Silicon Valley and met with a number of peers from my network to discuss their thoughts about cloud computing. After sorting through all of the information I have gathered, I started to see a future where I predict the economics of business will radically change due to the way in which software and services are being delivered thanks to cloud computing.
I have organized my thoughts into the following categories:
- Cloud Culture- Modern day software companies are leaner and more agile
- Investing in Reality- VC investments are shifting from B2C/ad models to B2B/integration models
- Changing Labor Pool – Crowd-sourcing models and labor as a service
- New business models – Pay as you go and self service models vs Licensing/professional services models
- Founder’s dilemma - Software is becoming cheaper while engineering is becoming more complex
- PaaS is the game changer – Open platforms running on any infrastructure and community based PaaS domains
These six categories will change how we do business forever. Stay tuned for my six part series on cloud economics. All six parts are now complete and can be accessed from the links above.
Update: 6/10/2013 – Here is the presentation I gave at the Cloud Expo is NYC
