the Onda

Apparently clouds dissipate because of two primary reasons: because the air temperature rises or because the moisture in the cloud falls. When it comes to the metaphorical cloud that is Internet-scale computing, this past week seems to have given us both.

The temperature of the air started rising with the much awaited launch of the iPhone 3G, and more importantly, Apple's foray into cloud services with its MobileMe productivity suite. Stumbling through scaling issues, synchronization problems, and general uptime challenges, the company started by two Steves under the "one man, one machine" mantra proved yet again that providing scalable server-based platforms is a whole different challenge from creating intuitive and edible interfaces and devices, and that maybe— just maybe— we ought to leave that work to the pros.

And just as all of us were turning MobileMe off, and reverting to our trusty old Gmail accounts, Google goes and shows us just how fast the moisture is dissipating with its most disappointing quarter to date. AdWords— the best model to date for subsidizing cloud infrastructure— does not appear immune to general economic woes. To add insult to injury, some people are out declaring that software-as-service businesses have to "slog it out" to build sustainable advantage, and predictable revenue streams.

To all of this I say: meh. While Apple may never be a truly credible purveyor of cloud services (along with a host of other big tech companies including the one I work for), some infrastructure players will figure it out— slog or no slog— and help us transition to this next phase of computing. And for the business model hiccups? This is a 10 year transition at the very least, and and such it is marathon and not the kind of sprint that has yielded such great speculative financial bubbles.

Patience.

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