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The Irony of Innovation at the Edge

Cloud Computing, Identity, Internet of Things
Author: Mark Dixon
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
5:17 pm

Oh, the irony of our crazy industry!  Back in 2009, I blogged about a book entitled, “The Big Switch:  Re-wiring the World, from Edison to Google,” by Nicholas Carr.  This book proposed that the shift from traditional data center computing to a utility-based computing model will follow the same general trend that electricity generation followed – from a model of each individual factory maintaining its own electricity generation capability to our current utility-based electricity generation and grid delivery model. 

Today I read an intriguing article, “What’s threatening utilities: Innovation at the edge of the grid,” which proposed:

… utilities are structured to treat electricity as a commodity, produced in central power plants and delivered to consumers over long distances in a one-way transaction, with price and reliability of supply the sole concerns.  None of that is working anymore. Lots of forces are conspiring to put the current arrangement under stress, but the most important, in my mind, is a wave of innovation on the “distribution edge” of the grid.

SmartgridGraphics

Just think … at the same time as utility-style cloud computing is being hyped as the greatest trend in technology, the electrical utility industry is being decentralized to accommodate both generation and consumption at the edge!

One thing is certain.  Wait a few years and things will change some more!

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