After attending the 2011 RSA Security conference in San Francisco recently I was struck by how much momentum that cloud computing and cyber security are generating. Last year’s event was impressive, but I sensed a buzz during the entire show this year. I believe these two trends will alter the landscape of the traditional security industry and that it is happening even faster than I thought.
I recommend a book titled “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr. The theme is that the future of computing follows the history of the electric utility industry. Early power requirements were generated by people and companies (waterwheels, steam, coal, etc.) until the electric grid was constructed and power could be distributed over a network. In the future, computer hardware in the home and IT departments in companies will go the way of the waterwheel and be replaced by services generated over the Internet, as in cloud computing. We see this today in mobile computing devices and social networks (facebook, twitter), and business applications (salesforce.com).