Speed of Assembly - Software

Much is being made of "cloud computing" these days. I've read a number of papers and essays about it (see some references below). What strikes me about this recent meme is that for the first time (that I can remember anyway) software advances are now being talked about in the same way as hardware advances have been. Exponential growth in the tools to develop software, is lowering the cost and time to assemble applications. Because of this, we are starting to see a dramatic rise in the number of applications that are coming out and the applications are becoming more and more numerous and loosely fitting. See widgetbox.com and others. I believe this may give rise to the era of intermediaries and the "end of the middle" so to speak in support. (That's me!!)

References:

Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., Lee, G., Patterson, D., Rabkin, A., Stoica, I., Zaharia, M., “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing”, Available from: http://d1smfj0g31qzek.cloudfront.net/abovetheclouds.pdf. Feb. 2009.

Hayes, B., “Cloud Computing”, Communications of the ACM, July 2008, Vol. 51, No. 7, Available from: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1364786

Katz, R., “The Tower and The Cloud. Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing”, EDUCAUSE, Available from: http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud. Feb. 2009.

Pence, H.E., “The Classroom in the Cloud” Powerpoint presentation, SUNY College at Oneonta, Spring 2009.

Schaffhauser, D., “Free Cloud Computing Environment Launches”, Campus Technology, Available from: http:// campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/04/15/Free-Cloud-Computing-Environment-Launches.aspx. April 2009.

Warner, B., “Building the Enterprise Corporate Cloud”, WaMu/Chase, Available from: http://tinyurl.com/cr9nca, 2009.