New Trade Routes

Drawing digital pathways on the new trade maps.

Seattle, WA USA

Trade drives the way people interact.  People, products, money, and ideas follow the trade routes and impact everything in their path.  Keeping pace with the way trade routes are changing is essential to success or even survival.  New Trade Routes is working to better understand the changes so we can help our clients, investees, and grantees improve their chances of success.

 

Modernization: Aren't Computers Already Modern?

January 11, 2020  /  Jay Leon

After a five year hiatus, I am restarting this blog. It’s a bit crazy to think that my last post was about Marshawn Lynch, and Marshawn just returned to Seahawk football and plays for us tomorrow against Green Bay. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

While I was away from blogging I was helping Microsoft and its partners pave the way for their customers’ journey to the cloud. In the weeks and months ahead I hope to share some of the things I learned along the way.

Here are three main themes I expect us to be talking about this year:

Modernization: How can computing need modernization? In the movies, computers are always futuristic! We have seen many breakthroughs in computing but two really stand out: the personal computer (PC) and the virtual machine (VM). The PC moved us from hundreds of computers in the world to hundreds of millions of computers in the world. The VM disconnected hardware from software. I propose that modern computing started with the introduction of the VM. This wave was started by VMware, which was founded in 1998 and launched VMware Workstation in 1999 and VMware GSX Server in 2001. So the modern era started 20 years ago. Yeah, I know that the internet and the smartphone were also big.

Fragmentation: The big computer companies get most of the attention, but there are hundreds of companies on the front edge of modernization and more are starting every day. These companies often compete and collaborate and the same time and are going to be buying each other at speed for years to come.

Just Getting Started: The Amazonians are right when they say it is only Day 1. We are just getting started on this modernization thing and everything can change at any time.

I look forward to a vibrant conversation about these and many other topics in the days ahead.

Comment