I was recently cleaning my apartment when I came across a scrap of paper — a brainstorming list for outlining the agenda for my Structure conference — an annual event I hosted about the cloud, the future of Internet infrastructure, and how it impacted business logic. For this proposed event, I contemplated the ‘present future’ of Internet infrastructure & business logic when everything had a digital heartbeat and companies existed at a planet-scale.
- There is no future if you are not developer friendly.
- Logged in the new default (state) for a company.
- Consumer (technology) profits are now at planet scale.
- Companies need the responsiveness of “now.”
- Backend systems aren’t built to interface with customers at planet scale
- Context is what’s happening and you.
- Notifications are agents.
Directionally, the list wasn’t that off the mark. In a decade, whether you are a car company or selling sugar water or pizza, the software is key to your existence, and for that, you need software. As a company, notifications are a key means of interaction with customers. Long-term customer relationships come from context, and that means hyper-personalization of our experience of that software.
The growth in cloud revenues shows that the world has finally understood the need for planet-scale infrastructure. Looking at the wild growth in revenues of Amazon, Spotify, Shopify, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter — technology profits are now at planet scale.
Maybe I should take the time and make another list about how the future of the Internet’s infrastructure and key defining behaviors in 2030. Who knows, the list and work it involves will inspire me to host an event.
August 22, 2021. San Francisco