Sun's Red Shift Theory

This is a very interesting article on a theory by Sun's CTO Greg Papadopoulos that over the intermediate term, computing and data centers are going to consolidate so much that eventually a very large percentage of all computing will be done in massive data centers owned by a very few large companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft etc. I agree with quite a bit of this theory and though Microsoft isn't mentioned in the article, I think it is clear that we will be a major player in this space. Our current major services such as Hotmail, Live ID, SkyDrive, etc are only the very beginning. Sun as usual leaves out any mention of the client. I strongly believe that Microsoft has a much clearer overall vision that encompasses the massive back end consolidtion that is happening but also leverages the massive computing power at the edge which is comprised of the hundreds of millions of PCs in the world. To not address and utilize this power is a tremendous waste of resources and very short sighted. Unfortunately a lot of commentators gloss over our Software + Services message vision as an attempt to protect shrink-wrapped software sales. This also is very short sighted. The increasng power and decreasing cost of PCs and devices continues to be an amazing human achivement. The winners in the technology industry over the next 15 years will be those that provide the best combination of cloud-based services and rich client devices and applications. Microsoft is one of the few that is on this path. Interstingly and on a smaller scale, Apple is a great example of this as well.