Thursday, June 1, 2006 - The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

Impact of Net Neutrality

At Rough Type, Nicholas Carr repeats the question about the impact of net neutrality on utility computing and software-as-a-service businss models.

So far, not even my PFF colleagues, usually shy of neither views nor willingness to express them, have answered, so I am happy to have Rough Type shake the tree. And while we are at it, what about the impact of NN on Internet2 - that odd amalgam of open system and walled garden?

Rough Type also has interesting thoughts on the McKinsey article on developments in corporate IT departments. Conclusion:

[L]larger companies are reconfiguring their traditional IT assets as centralized internal utilities and then drawing in new IT capabilities from outside utility suppliers such as SaaS firms. This hybrid utility architecture, as I would term it, enables much greater efficiency in running mature, mainstream applications while also allowing companies to tap into the new generation of true Internet-based software. The hybrid model also provides a way for CIOs to defuse the tension between IT Departments focused on legacy applications and employees looking for new Web 2.0 capabilities - a tension that Peter Rip describes very well.

SaaS is looking more and more like the pivot between the IT of the past and the IT of the future.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:24 AM | Net Neutrality