What does matter?

Nicolas Carr, in his 2004 release of  "Does It Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage," proposed that IT was at a point of consolidation and standardization and that each company having it's own IT infrastructure (particularly servers, storage, security provisioning, IT Staff in support of the preceding) was all a bit silly.  At a point during the industrialization of the United States, businesses located themselves along rivers which they could harness to drive mechanical devices.  Not long after the water power was harnessed to produce electricity which replaced the water driven pulley and belt power distribution systems.  Each company produced their own electricity, most of it direct current but of different types and distribution mechanisms.  

As electrical distribution spread from manufacturing to residential communities the inconsistent power characteristics gave rise to a consolidation and standardization (ConEd =Consolidated Edison).

Over the course of my IT career there was a large migration from mainframe computers to distributed mini-computers, the evolution of personal computers and emergence of personal computer-based servers and then back to large storage systems and resource pools that allowed for processing and storage virtualization (dynamic).  Cloud computing moves much of that off-premise and into "the cloud" allowing for reduction in IT staff levels and a buy as needed philosophy.  We don't think twice about plugging into a 110v AC outlet; we know what's coming out.  That's the answer of cloud computing.  

At the time of the release there was considerable backlash from the entrenched IT executives and in particular vendors of premise-based IT solutions.  I found the concept intriguing, probably getting my first Amazon S3 account a few years later and tested it as a replacement for our expensive and on-premise backup solution.  

I'm going to apply for a position with one of the leading Google business application solution providers.  They work with companies to get them out of the IT business, allowing them to focus on their business, not on IT.  During my 27-year gig I formed a consortium of like executives in the commercial construction industry.  All of us were maintaining similar but separate infrastructures, often with under or over capacity challenges and always the battle of dollars with the CFO types.  We agreed in this small group that IT provided no competitive advantage to our highly competitive companies and we agreed that if we shared the challenges and successes and "finds" of our similar IT paths we would all live a bit better and all be more successful.  This group started in the late 1990's.  Had I been a Harvard professor I would have taken the time to write the book that Nicolas Carr wrote.

Application
So I'm going to apply for a position with the local (with national recognition) Google Business Application company.  They'd like someone who can talk with C-level executives, primarily on the phone.  I've been on the buyer's side and negotiated the overly complex agreements and licenses qualifications with Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, etc.  I think I can sell Google.

Changed World
Stated before has been my position that I am not a big tablet user primarily because I like to have a real keyboard.  The web provides many resources and combined with a smartphone/digital camera you can pretty much figure out how to solve a lot of problems and gather a lot of information.

One of my children is moving to a new (old) house and I've been helping a bit with some of the upgrades.  My onsite equipment includes a lot of hand tools and a few power tools.  Strangely and progressively enough I also found it helpful to have a personal computer on site for finding answers.  This happens to be a Samsung Chromebook which runs the Chrome operating system and with which I most often use Google apps for writing, analytics, etc.

Music helps when work so I did also bring a Bluetooth speaker and streamed music from my iPhone using Amazon Prime Music, a few favorite podcasts and my own library of music which now resides on the cloud.

It's a much changed world of computing.  I'm not sure that we'll save all that much personally or in the business setting but we will eliminate the challenge of supporting our complex infrastructure.