Focus and Resource Scarcity

We tend to focus intently on key resources that are relatively scarce.

This truism seems so pervasive as to be trite...so why mention it? Where resource supply and demand change relatively slowly (or oscillate in a bounded range) I suspect there's no compelling reason to think much about this topic.

However, the world of IT continues to change quickly, and Moore's Law remains in force. One implication of this is being discussed by Joe McKendrick in his coverage of the emergence of a Service Science curriculum.

How does engineering and IT change when processing, communications, and storage becomes commoditized (i.e., cheap, pervasive, and standardized/interoperable)? Since the telegraph was invented, an enormous amount of effort has been focused on dealing with resource scarcity in these areas. As that focus is freed up, it's beginning to shift to the business application of hyperconnected and commoditized IT.

It's a very different kind of problem demanding a different set of skills...and, IBM is recognizing this.

Finally, Dion Hinchcliffe has a nice summary of one current aspect of this transition...cloud computing.