Happy New Year!

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Today's technology subsumes technologies that were developed earlier. The result is compounding of capacity and functionality which results in exponential improvements with each new wave of products.

The Internet bootstrapped itself first on the shoulders of the old voice+PDH network, and then on the shoulders of the SONET and SDH transport network. The Web stands on the shoulders of the Internet. Mobile Apps are enabled by mobile, the Global Positioning System and the web.

We are surprised and delighted by an accelerating stream of new products, services and experiences - a next generation smart phone, Twitter, high frequency trading, the Avatar movie...

It's the technology that provides the economics that makes applications affordable and profitable.  Cost is key.  If you can lower the costs of doing something, then magic can happen.  We have experienced the impact of technology several times in the past few years.  New technology is disruptive - once you have moved on, there is no going back. (What to do with those old cell-phones and computers?)

Technology has always undermined old business models.  The impact is of course most visible higher up the technology stack. The business impact is potentially even more significant in the infrastructure layers. The new applications create a set of new demands on the infrastructure. The new technology provides better, cheaper and simpler ways to profitably meet these demands.

Happy New Year!