Cloud Computing and the 10X Effect

In the IT industry, technology and the usage evolves faster than in perhaps any other industry. As a rule of thumb, systems can grow 10 times under their current architecture or paradigm, then they must be re-architected. This 10X effect causes old technologies to become obsolete and new ones to emerge. It also underlies the massive shift to cloud computing.

The last major computing infrastructure paradigm shift happened in the ‘80s when “client/server” was introduced as the new way to design business applications. Those applications typically ran on x86 computers – aka PCs.

Then, in the ‘90s, the “client” part of this overall design was disrupted and changed with the advent of the Internet. Instead of having applications running on a desktop PC accessing application servers on other PCs, we started accessing applications through web browsers which did little more than rendering on your own desktop or laptop computer. Now, 10-15 years later, we’re seeing the “server” side of client/server disrupted and replaced by cloud computing.

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