As I drove to work today I was struck by a blast of irony. First, I drove in a teeny green car owned by Bob Laliberte, the largest person in Massachusetts, as he borrowed my giant pickup truck that I clearly don’t belong in, ever. On the way, I found myself freezing to death, miserable, sick of the 9 degree winter when all of the sudden, a little Bob Marley comes on the radio, and darn if I didn’t just feel better. I think I actually felt warmer.

For 50 years as an IT society, the “value” created by industry has always been based around – more, or bigger. Bigger boxes, bigger switches, bigger servers. More capacity, more ports, more users, more everything. It took until now to realize that more is no longer valuable – that the exact opposite is now where the value lies.

So, regardless of why, we now realize that unless its money – more sucks. Less is way better than more. It’s interesting if you think about the potential ramifications of this concept across a industry built on the exact opposite principals. Technologies such as server virtualization or data de-duplication or WAN optimization are modern examples of big value creators – and all of them are about making LESS. Fewer servers, less storage, less bandwidth. Thus, assuming the value shift is proper (of course it is), then if your business model is predicated on MORE – you are screwed, eventually. People are now paying MORE money, and driving more market value by selling LESS. Brilliant.

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