Forbes September '06 front page article "The New Barbarians" covers the "four waves" of computing as follows: 1) mainframes (think IBM); 2) Mini-Computers(think DEC); 3) PC (think Dell); 4) Cheap & Obiquitous Utility Computing (think Linux). The entrepreneurs at Cassatt (virtualization), ActiveGrid (developemnt tools), & Zimbra (email) all have their sights set on industry heavyweights and with the right mix of luck and technology they are likely to succeed. Why? Because better, faster, cheaper has always carried the day in the technology space and the there is no reason to believe that trend will not continue. The incumbents see the writing on the wall, but tech has always favored the young and the hip (see the innovator's dilemma).
However that is not the interesting part--the transformation (the real impact) will be at the companines that use cheap cycles to transform their organizations and in some cases their industries. The historically luddite legal industry will not be spared--somewhere there is a "new barbarian" with some heavyweights in her sights.
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