Everything as a Service

I was reading an interesting piece by Matt McAlister that discusses “Media as a Service” in which the “domain name for an online media service is becoming sort of an abstract utility or maybe just a brand address for media services rather than the real estate upon which the core activity occurs.”

This is not much different than any “utility model”, but in this case Matt is defining the Media as a Service as such:

1. Data is infinitely distributable.

2. Data can be visualized in meaningful ways.

3. Media is created by everyone.

4. Distribution technologies are increasingly efficient and inexpensive.

5. The distance between buyer and seller is shrinking.

With the exception of #2 you could make the argument that open source is basically the same thing. The difference is that there are less available developers than there are content provider. Also content tools for “service media” have become highly usable and available over the last few years–so that building an infrastructure has become affordable for anyone. Just as sites like Sourceforge.net did for open source Blogger did for media.

The big idea that I am wondering about is if it’s even possible to completely transition to the “Enterprise as a Service.” So far the answer is no. Even if we believe that IT doesn’t matter and all software should be delivered as service there is no agreed upon set of principles that allow for the concept to completely take shape.

Several people I have spoken to in the last week noted that they were interested in technology that would allow for data from various places to be incorporated and processed into their IT infrastructure securely and without human intervention. This lead me to wonder how you deal with multiple services in multiple internal and external clouds, and while SOA is the theoretical panacea there are too many variables at the moment.

Not sure what I have figured out here (if anything.)