Page 35 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE C L O UD REV O L UTION

operating systems, memory, microchips. All of a sudden it’s
‘the cloud.’ What is the cloud? The cloud is water vapor. . . .
Change ‘cloud’ to ‘Internet’ and give it back to these nitwits
on Sand Hill Road.”
Sand Hill Road is the road that slopes down the west side
of Silicon Valley into Menlo Park, along which the venture

capitalists have built their low-slung offices. I know people
along that road; very few of them are nitwits. Some of them
are busy at this moment giving millions of dollars to cloud
computing start-ups.
For 25 years, Ellison has adroitly positioned his company
at the head of various technology trends. He’s slated to be
paid $73 million this year, according to Bloomberg. Is cloud

computing really going to become a major business trend if
someone like Ellison treats it with a skepticism bordering on
disdain?
Many would argue that defining the cloud in technology
terms leads to a description that is less than the sum of its
parts. Too many people are examining the details of the cloud
to discover where the key advances occur. The cloud should
be examined less through a microscope and more through
the lens of business and technology convergence.

Think of small streams on a frozen mountainside. They all
look familiar and insignificant until they are given a chance to
converge in an ice field, which in turn starts a glacier moving
down the valley. Boulders that had been immovable objects in
the streams can now be pushed aside. The valley is about to be
reshaped as the glacier expands and pushes against the land-
scape around it. But the cloud “glacier” will not be moving at

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