Re: Wait, what was that ?
The centralisation / decentralisation of computer hardware is an ongoing cycle that has persisted 50 years.
After selling centralised mainframes to corporations and service bureaus, the manufacturers spearheaded decentralisation by selling minicomputers to departments. And then PC-class machines to individual business units.
Then they invented enterprise computing and sold server-class machines to the corporations.
Now they have invented cloud computing – which means they sell mainframe-class machines to the new generation of service bureaus.
The next wave of selling direct to the corporations is now upon us.
What next? I predict puddle computing – powerful department-level machines that cache and process the output from the clouds.
Why not? Highly paid consultants will prove that agile puddling is the cheapest option.