Ben Hyde musing about the centralization/decentralization/recentralization of IT:

So, what is this. A cyclic process?...

I do not believe the power is going to stop in CIO’s data center. I think it’s just passing thru. I think it’s headed up and into the net. There it will fall into the hands of a small number of players as the network effects emerge and cause condensation. Consider email, calendaring, HR, sales pipelines, etc. etc. none of these has a strong reason - beyond illusions of privacy - to remain parked in the company data center. I’ve observed at least four of sales groups at this point that run two sets of books, i.e. two sales pipelines. One in the internal system because they were required to, and another on some internet embedded service run by a 3rd party because it was simple, effective, better socialized, more “situated,” and extremely adaptive.