[VLM]

One interesting observation about commodity hardware is it increases in capability faster than the rate of many business demands. In the short term if there's a lack of infrastructure you can grow shipping at a very fast rate, until you catch up...

In the long run the "walking dead" from the article are doomed when due to technological growth an entire data center can be converted to a single rack in a closet without any expensive monthly upstream bandwidth charges and nickel and dimeing from a cloud. Those suppliers have expensive corporate infrastructure that depends on shipping $50M data centers in 2005 not a single $100K rack in 2015, or 2025 or 2035 or whatever, to do the same task. Maybe a great sales campaign can convince them to double their usage, that still leaves them $49.8M in the hole, non-inflation adjusted (ouch).

Computational use for non-computer businesses is kinda like electricity in the VERY long term. If you look at the early years of the growth of electricity vs GDP or whatever, you can rapidly get strange ideas like the average office in 2015 based on projections from 1915 should be radiating heat like the surface of the sun. However, here we are, there is a natural leveling off of how much electricity or municipal water or food a business can usefully consume per unit of GDP. Assuming GDP only goes up, inflation adjusted (LOL). When companies bounce off those limits, life will get very exciting for "eternal Moores Law growth forever" oriented suppliers for those businesses. Based on facebook use stat growth rates in 2007 we should all be spending 78626 hours per day on facebook... didn't happen... building a supplier company based on that assumed growth trend will lead to tears. Moores law says the transistor will shrink not that people will buy it.