As IDC Sees It, Tech's 'Third Platform' Disrupts Everyone

It's an intriguing notion, and one to which IDC wholly subscribes: "In 2014 and 2015, we'll see a battle for developers play out in the cloud, much like the one between AndroidAndroid, iOS, and Windows for mobile apps and developers." Alles zu Android auf CIO.de

IDC considers this so important that it devotes a lengthy paragraph to discuss the importance of developers; the section is headed, "A pitched battle for developers (and apps) in the cloud." It goes on to note that the companies seeking to be one of the six to eight large-scale CSPs will display "great urgency in this battle for developers."

This is all part of the ongoing shift of power from central IT to application groups and business units, the latter two represented by developers. I discuss this transformation. It's critical to recognize, too, that this shift is occurring not because IT executives have suddenly come to realize the intelligence of their developers or their contributions. The shift is occurring because developers are the vehicle by which new applications are created, and IT is - finally - coming to the fore in most companies.

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The looming issue for most companies is the need to accelerate application development. Now that the friction associated with infrastructure provisioning has been reduced by cloud computing, the biggest impediment to rolling out new and updated applications is the development process itself. Addressing that bottleneck will be the issue du jour throughout 2014.