My Review of "Inflection Point"

5 out of 5 stars....

This book discusses the intersection of Big Data, the Cloud and Mobility and how it represents not just a new trend or an incremental step in technology, but an "Inflection Point," such that it makes nearly all businesses obsolete unless they transform their IT immediately.

Basically, computers and software should be seen as a utility service, provided by another company that has as its core competency, providing and maintaining such systems for a reasonable periodic service fee. Then, the company should stick to its core competencies. so, no need for its own data center, computers, existing software and staff to manage updates.

Also part of this inflection point are Apps. The internet is now really a collection of applications, such that one could start a new business in a short time without prior knowledge, using Apps. So, incremental will not work now, since competition can now develop and improve super fast. A key word now is disintermediation. massive loss of jobs, basically because of elimination of middlemen.

This SaaS (software as a service) and the disintermediation resulting is amplified with the Internet of Things with machines communicating with machines via the Cloud, bypassing the need for additional jobs, and steps for ordinary humans outside the workplace.

The book also addresses how one can better evaluate stocks for their personal portfolio, considering the above. The popular metric of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is worthless because now, this excludes the very things which could make the company uncompetitive in this new environment. Instead, ROIC (return on invested capital), is perhaps now the premier metric to be used, along with cash flow.

Also, the book covers MDM (mobile device management), very important to let company employees use their own mobile device, maybe only just partially subsidized by the company since it also can be used for personal stuff. The key being simplicity.

The book also mentions mobile middleware,which allows Apps to communicate with Apps.

The beauty of this book is how it ties together these very important concepts in such a neat way, making an easy and fast reading book. I heartily recommend it.