What do the general public cloud and the steam engine have in common? Greater than you would think.

Here’s a talk that James Watt, the 18th century developer of the steam engine, may need with Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos: Mr. Watt, you have to be very happy with your accomplishments.

James Watt: Call me James, Laddie.

Bezos: Sure, Jim, it’s essential be…

Watt: That’s James, not Jim. We do not know one another that well yet.

Bezos: I stand corrected.

Watt: Don’t stand. Have a seat. Yes, I’m happy that, greater than 200 years after my death, my name is on light bulbs everywhere. a regular home has greater than 80 light bulbs. But did you know what ticks me off?

Bezos: What would that be?

Watt: i do not make a farthing off that. Did I say it was okay to use my name? i didn’t.

Bezos: But imagine the consideration. Would you otherwise be Georg Ohm?

Watt: Obviously not. Nobody remembers who Georg Ohm was. Ohm — that seems like a Hare Krishna chant. But i’ve got a query for you, Mr. Bezos. Do you truly think you’ll have those drone things delivering packages for you?

Bezos: How do you know about that? Do you guys get 60 Minutes?

Watt: i could be dead, but i am not out of touch. Yes, we get 60 Minutes, but we do not get Homeland, because cable is just too expensive. Before i used to be dead, i used to be Scottish, you recognize.

Bezos: But tell me. While you observe modern society, could the steam engine have helped us with a number of our current problems?

Watt: Current problems? Save that discussion on your chat with Tommy Edison. He only killed a sickly elephant when he was attempting to scare people about alternating current. You have to kill thousands when your drones start colliding with unsuspecting people. But let’s move directly to a number of your more pressing problems. I notice that you are having a difficulty with global warming. What number autos are there inside the US?

Bezos: We’ve got 250 million cars and a population of 310 million. China has 240 million cars and may probably pass the united states next year.

[How is the army coping with big data? Read The War On Military Records.]

Watt: Well, that’s your problem, Laddie. Each of these cars is a tiny fire exploding inside your carburetor every second. Imagine in the event you had 250 million campfires. Which may cause a little warmness, wouldn’t you assert?

Bezos: Well, what should we do about this?

Watt: i have two solutions. What number houses do you’ve got, 100 million? Suppose everyone just left their ice box or refrigerators open. That may are inclined to cool where down, would it?

Bezos: What’s your second idea?

Watt: Didn’t like that one? How about steam cars? If my steam engine could work on railroads and ocean liners, why not power cars with steam?

Bezos: They tried that about 100 years ago — Stanley Steamers, they called them — but they never made it big.

Watt: For sure not. What sort of name is Stanley? No, in the event that they had called them Watt Steamers…

Bezos: Let’s change the topic. I’m very curious about how those big manufacturing companies 100 years ago stopped generating their very own electric power along with your steam engines and plugged into the electrical grid that Tom Edison built. I’m doing style of the identical thing with my Amazon infrastructure product, giving everyone a resounding cloud service at a continually lower cost. What do you’re thinking that?

Watt: Brilliant. That’s exactly what I did. I invented the steam engine, after which some bright people put it on a ship and called it a steam ship. Then they put it on rails and made a locomotive. After which they attached it to a bucket and made a steam shovel. You’re building a bloody platform. Now, how are you charging for it?

Bezos: Well, I’ve dropped the cost of my web services 25 times. I’m concentrating first in eight geographic areas: three within the US and five internationally. And i have made it in order that we will share capacity in accordance with the demand, time of day, or even natural disasters. How does that sound?

Watt: How does the cash feel about all this?

Bezos: Well, the venture guys were a bit miffed. If an organization uses my cloud services, there is a lot less capital it needs. Entrepreneurs appear to flock to it, and a couple of half million developers have jumped on.

Watt: Good man. You’re doing just what I did, just 300 years later. My guess is that 100 years from now, you may be remembered for this and never for selling a great number of books.

Consumerization 1.0 was “we do not need IT.” Today we want IT to bridge the space between consumer and business tech. Also within the Consumerization 2.0 issue of InformationWeek: Stop worrying in regards to the role of the CIO (free registration required).

Howard Anderson founded The yank Group, a high-tech analysis firm he ran from 1970 to 2000, and is co-founding father of Battery Ventures, which has raised $4.5 billion and invested in additional than 300 high-tech firms. He teaches at MIT at the management of entrepreneurial firms and at Dartmouth on high-tech sales strategies.

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