The Big Switch, what's this book all about

What is at the heart of the “Big Switch”?

To me, this book is about the disruptive change of technology.

To some, disruption might only be about changing from being a Yankees fan to a Mets fan.

But to the cloud, it’s about the Internet grid that’s changing everything!

This book by Nicholas Carr harkens back to the days of the water wheel and the generation of electricity by water power and the huge disruptions in the expansion of power plants in the early 1900’s. Interestingly, Nicholas juxtaposes this electrical grid disruption to today’s disruptions from the Internet grid in the cloud….It’s one huge analogy!  Read on for some deeper insight.

Let’s look at the Power grid…

Remember reading about those huge Grist Mills that were powered by huge wheels driven by rivers of water.  They were generating power at the source, where the power was being used directly in a manufacturing plant. 

With the advent of electricity, there followed electrical generating plans that allowed power to be generated away from the users of power and centralized and different locations.  This was great right?  Well, it took decades for the factories to realize what this disruptive change would bring. They were reluctant to trust outsiders with their most precious resource, power.  Their thinking was fixated on one thing…if the power company went down, so did my business.

But the big switch happened and electricity was now being distributed though distributed electrical grids and provided some sense of redundancy on the sources of generation.  Thereafter, this big switch allowed for the redundant expenses of local power generation to be eliminated, and factories were now allowed the freedom to build wherever they chose.  Factories could scale off the grid, reduce their risk of reliance, expand their worker base and move away from the non-value added task of generating electricity and focus on the generation of profits from their business!

Starting to see how a grid can be disruptive?

One more example…Let’s look at the Computing Grid.

Back in the 1960’s there were two huge Mainframe computing projects that began the first wave of computing, SABRE and ERMA.  Sabre as you might recall was the first national reservation system running on huge mainframes.  ERMA was the first national banking system.  What happened?  Every big company built their own copy cat version, driving IT spending up 100 fold up into the 1970’s and beyond.  Mainframes were the bomb!

Then there was a big switch in the 1970’s to the client-server model driving by a huge reduction in hardware costs and a marked increase in computing power.

The development of highly specialized applications went rampant requiring new machines, new software, data centers, technicians and software development.  Previously centralized tasks and systems were now distributed and performed on 1000’s of servers.  IT spending went up 100 fold.

There was one more big switch that took decades to develop, Internet grid computing.

Costs of storage were reduced 100 fold.  The Internet and access to bandwidth exploded.  Finally, virtualization of computing power and servers was uncovered.  All this made the client-server model un-scalable and almost obsolete.

The last leg of the big switch was a collection of all of these into software as a service in the cloud.  Now, the building blocks of computing power can be broken up with data, software, hardware distributed over different locations across the globe allowing portability.  Enterprises were reluctant to make the switch, what if the Internet went down?

Now, take a look back at the expansion of the power grid and note the similarities.  Companies were back then reluctant to move to a centralized power grid because they thought they would lose control!

Companies did eventually move and what did they gain?  Freedom and profits…freedom to do business anywhere with anyone, profits from their better focus on their business with less distractions from non-value added tasks.  Guess what, IT spending is not going up 100 fold!

So, now you get the analogy?

Cloud computing today is the distributed power grid of the past, just reinvented using the technologies of today.  Consumers are moving into the cloud.  Enterprises are moving to cloud, it’s all about the freedom to do what you need to do.

Final question?  Any you ready for the next Big Switch, do you seek the freedom that it will bring? Or are we afraid to make the next Big Switch, just like we made all the others…