Having been around the technology biz for a few decades — — I’ve observed with great interest the reality of Moore’s Law. In (very) short, Mr. Moore made a prediction back in 1965 that essentially stated our computing power would double every 18 months or so.  This has held remarkably true, the result being that we all have very fast computers for our personal and business use.

Ironically, now that we have all of this computing power (and operating systems that begin to harness it), we’re moving many of our applications OFF of our incredibly fast computers and into the Cloud — where our incredible computing power is being shared with X number of other users.  We’re now pointing all of the power of our personal computers at our web browsers, remote desktop utilities and Internet access.

Naturally, there are other forces at work on our current migration to the Cloud, but if Moore’s Law continues to hold true, it seems to me that we’ll see a long-term “vacillation” of the market between Cloud applications and local applications that take better advantage of the incredible personal computer power that we’ll all have.  Other forces will drive this as well … such as the revenue produced for the information technology industry by change itself.  In other words, once we get good and settled in the Cloud, we’ll find some very compelling reason to migrate back to The Desktop.

As we migrate our own applications and internal infrastructure into the cloud, we find ourselves adopting a mixed strategy to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing, yet retain those of rich local applications.  Our own sales quoting software, Quosal, is a great example of an application that represents the best of both worlds — the richness of a desktop application, yet one that can be hosted in the Cloud and is continually accessing Cloud-based resources.

I will continue to watch with interest the dance between Moore’s Law and The Cloud.  In the long run, I think we’ll all win.