[Spooky23]

It's basically pointing out the ping-pong effect that the tech industry tends to go through.

Once upon a time, companies did lots on stuff on big mainframes and minicomputers. These devices were centralized, and you were given what the high priests of Data Processing saw fit go give you.

As PC came to be, computing moved out to the desktop/laptop and away from the big iron. Innovation and chaos commenced. To control the chaos, "servers" emerged. To lower costs and improve services, "clouds" emerged. All of this happened over 25 years.

Enter the "new" client devices -- smartphones/tablets. These devices are increasingly tied to cloud-based APIs and services that are tightly controlled by the vendor providing the service. With cloud IaaS vendors like Amazon, that' ok -- they are offering a commodity. For PaaS vendors like Google or Microsoft or Salesforce.com, it's a bigger deal -- when those vendors decide that some application or API is end of life, you're screwed.

Basically, we're entering a cycle/era similar to the mainframe era that was left behind in the 80's and 90's.

[DaddyDuck]

That's absolutely true! The one thing is today, it's not anymore big secure mainframes operated by corporate for corporate data; it's everyone's computing that is outsourced to third party companies. This is a totally new situation where the balance of power is very different.

[proussea]

"when those vendors decide that some application or API is end of life, you're screwed."

Google Reader for ex ? :)

[Spooky23]

Absolutely... the real story about Google Reader isn't the shutdown. That's putting a bullet in a dead horse. The real lesson was taught to me a couple of years ago when they ripped the sharing features out of Reader, just because.

Microsoft is similar. Office 365 gives you something like 6 months to defer major releases. So say I customized something in SharePoint 2010 that doesn't translate well in 2013. Too bad -- I have 6 months to make changes or lose the customization.

It isn't always a bad thing either. Plenty of companies don't have or don't prioritize resources for platforms that they rely on. People still run Oracle 8 and Exchange 2003. "Letting the professionals" at a cloud provider handle it is a good thing, but it comes with a cost.