None of this would have happened if Carly hadn’t made a mistake in firing all those HP salespeople and I hadn’t taken a risk.

Although successful with these large companies, something was always missing. I yearned to be able to create something on my own, and I’ve just taken an even bigger risk. After 12 years of planning, I left Rackspace in January to join the ranks of the entrepreneurs (or unemployed as some like to call us).

It's all about user generated data. You might think that GE is a product company, and you'd be right.  But it's also a services company that services millions of industrial devices in the energy, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors.  These devices  create literally exabytes of data, data which GE currently uses to service and maintain it's customers equipment and gain insights on product design, and in the future will be used for  much more.

As mature enterprises look to gain flexibility and customer intimacy while startups look for speed and new business models, a federated model for IT is emerging. Some call it "hybrid" cloud (don't get me started on all the cloud-washing going on) But it's really more than just the infrastructure.

To be relevant to the business, CIOs have to talk about more than cost and uptime – they need to be able to build momentum by educating their business counterparts on how these emerging technologies can transform a company from a business perspective.

I recently came across Geoffrey Moore's  recent YouTube video, Is Your Business Model Being Disrupted? The Era of Code Halo... and it triggered a few thoughts....