Transitions in Sports and Enterprise Computing

Spain's 2010 World Cup soccer team celebrates its victory

In sports we’ve seen several significant transitions in the last few weeks: Spain won its first World Cup against The Netherlands, which was also contending for its first World Cup. Tom Watson crossed and kissed the Swilken Bridge at the St. Andrews Links golf course where the British Open was held, signifying the last time he would play the world's oldest golf course in competition. Louis Oosthuizen from South Africa, where the World Cup was held, won his first major golf competition at the British Open. Lebron James moved to Miami. George Steinbrenner passed away.

Louis Oosthuizen accepting the British Open trophy

There is a similar wave of transitions in enterprise computing, although the stories are about business and technical trends rather than individuals. I compiled several articles that illustrate the current transitions to enterprise cloud computing:

• Yankee Group: Cloud Proponents Outnumber Skeptics for First Time, Yankee Group Finds
• IDC: SaaS Revenue to Grow Five Times Faster Than Traditional Packaged Software Through 2014, IDC Finds
• Huffington Post: Google Wins Security Clearance, Launches 'Apps for Government'
• GigaOM: Emerging Markets Will Bring A Third of Global Mobile Data Revenues by 2014 
• TechCrunch: Report: Mobile App Store Downloads to hit 25 billion by 2015
• CNN Money: The End of the Desktop PC (Seriously)
• Techcrunch: Enterprise Software is Sexy Again 

Tom Watson crossing the Swilken Bridge at St. Andrews Links

It is exciting to watch new sports heroes like Louis Oosthuizen win, while respecting the achievements of greats such as Tom Watson. I think a similar excitement for new achievements is occurring with cloud computing, while we respect all of the achievements in computer science, IT, and business that brought us to this point.