Gehry versus Wright Part 3 — Building Ecosystems in the Cloud

Bill Loumpouridis

New technologies have enabled breakthrough designs in construction that have allowed the whimsical musings of an architect like Frank Gehry to be turned into inspiring sweeps of creativity. In the same manner, cloud computing enables entirely new ways of approaching how automated systems are constructed and, more importantly, how these systems interact with one another.

One exciting development that has occurred in parallel with the rise of cloud computing is the advent of “open” systems, which have come to replace the closed architectures that dominated previous technological eras. Open systems allow business applications to freely exchange data using commonly accepted protocols. As the practice of interconnecting systems became more commonplace, the idea of moving past one-to-one connections to interdependent networked computing took hold.

These open-systems capabilities are what allow various “clouds” to coexist and form ecosystems. This is how eBay has created an ecosystem around its auction platform, leveraging PayPal and other payment transaction gateways. Amazon and Google “rent” their cloud to other application vendors, forming additional ecosystems. Facebook, Foursquare and Zynga all share interdependent fates in the “social cloud.”

Even hardware companies depend on open-systems capabilities. Nokia’s new CEO was recently quoted as saying that the key to the company’s survival was to either create a new ecosystem or join an existing one.

The ecosystem that Apple has been able to construct resembles a city comprised of Frank Gehry buildings – each of them unique, yet sharing a common aesthetic. Of course, the overarching unifying principle of the Apple ecosystem is really a matter of form following function – the triumph of the user experience as the ultimate arbiter of mass acceptance. Frank Lloyd Wright would have been proud.

As with many emerging technology trends, we are only scratching the potential of cloud computing. Ultimately, my belief is that the most powerful way to leverage this technology centers on the ability it gives us to form new ecosystems quickly and easily. Those who will prosper will have both the vision of Frank Gehry and the courage, tenacity and bold execution of Frank Lloyd Wright. Cloud computing delivers the “right” balance of technology enablement, timing and execution to create the ecosystems of the future.