But a different thought took hold; Hmmm… GrabCAD is to the CAD/CAM professional the same way GitHUB is to the software professional. We’re witnessing the rise of start-ups that cater to “niche” audiences who create a certain kind of content as their prime means of professional affiliation. Don’t take offense to the term niche audience applied to software or CAD professionals. It’s just a way to say “not a mass audience” that is served by a general purpose content creation site like Tumblr, WordPress.com, etc.

GrabCAD targets the CAD/CAM professional with a CAD-specific sharing space augmented with a thin “social network layer.” Create a drawing, upload to GrabCAD, post a link “hey look what I created” and share, trade, and sell your work product. It’s not a place to generate generalized content (like Google Docs, ZoHo, or Office 365), but rather a sharing space for affiliated professionals that want to showcase “their wares.”

GitHUB is a content sharing system that targets the software professional. In this case, “content equals source code.” It’s really “social source code management” with a bunch of other goodies like wikis and pasties mixed in. Source code management has been around forever, but GitHUB makes it really easy to share and integrate code from various projects. Developers don’t actually write their code in GitHUB, they do that in their own developer environments, just like CAD professionals don’t use GrabCAD to create drawings.

In the software world, it is now common for developers to tout their GitHUB account URL as a living resume. You can imagine the CAD/CAM professional one day sharing links to their GrabCAD creativity just like software developers share their GitHUB awesomeness.

Catering to a large niche audience with a custom experience is a successful end-run around mass appeal social networks like Facebook. The core required features, such as file upload, link sharing, and comment curation exist in many platforms, from WordPress to Drupal, to Facebook. But a generic user experience will not suffice. GrabCAD speaks the language of the CAD industry. GitHUB does the same for the software industry.

There are other examples of this trend, although none as focused as GrabCAD or GitHUB:

• Prezi and Slideshare for presentations, although not specifically targeted toward a specific profession.
• Scribd for documents. But not targeted to a specific industry.
• Disqus for comments? Would it be a stretch to cite Disqus for the professional commenter? Probably, but an interesting idea.
• Basecamp for project managers.
• Sortfolio for web designers.

I can imagine other industries ripe for this niche audience approach: legal (specialized documents), chemical (formulas), teachers (lesson plans), music (lyrics). Easy and clear content owner attribution will need to be resolved for some of these ideas to be successful.

I’m excited to see the next GrabCAD come to life. If you know any vertically aligned professions where content creation is the core work-product, scratch your entrepreneurial itch and create a niche audience user experience now.

Replacing, instead of fixing, goes against the ingrained habits of over two decades of entrenched IT best practices. In the pre-cloud world, when real hardware was the base, we had to “fix IT” because replacing was too expensive and not practical. There was not an endless pile of spares lying about for a “replace IT” mindset.

But in the cloud, with, in theory, nearly infinite CPU, the remediation to an errant node should be to immediately replace, and move on.

Why Is This?

Because there are too many causes beyond our control at the OS level in a cloud environment. Think of the cloud like living in a high-rise building. Each unit in the building, just like each cloud customer, can have whatever interior they want, but there are also massive shared resources in the building. So while our interior may be a candidate for the next architectural digest cover, our neighbor could “kill our chill” with a too-loud stereo boom box. The cloud suffers from the noisy neighbor problem just like our theoretical high-rise. But in the cloud, we can choose to move and jump back into the random lottery for a new unit. We can’t change the building, but we can change the location within the building.

Of coure, you need the right cloud-centric architecture to be able to simply “replace IT” instead of “fix IT.” Having cloud-dexterity is critical to operating a successful cloud deployment.

The cloud requires us to “un-learn” the best practices of the past and embrace a new way of thinking about “break fix.” While replacing instead of fixing may seem wasteful, it’s really not. The time spent troubleshooting the random problem will not yield significant insights, and could be better spent focusing on more value-add projects. Usually after extensive diagnosis, the only recourse is to replace the node, since the original problem was an outlier.

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Ever since I heard about the first San Francisco Cloud Mafia event I have wanted to attend. The challenge was justifying a West Coast trip to coincide with the meet-up date. My fortunate luck that both events occurred the same week and within close physical proximity. Over 100 people attended Cloud Mafia last night to hear talks from AppFog, Loggly and New Relic. I was struck by the “electricity” in the air around this event. And the topic was more “nuts and bolts” about cloud management compared to the topics of the previous business-themed Cloud Mafia meet-ups.

Boston has many great “cloud” technology companies and enthusiastic individuals supporting the cause, but not as many compared to the activity in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Sonian sponsors Monday’s in the Cloud for Boston-area cloud aficionados looking for their cloud fix. In addition, there are numerous “big data” and entrepreneurial events sponsored by MassTLC,  BostonInno, CloudInno and others at venues such as Microsoft NERD, Royal Sonesta Cambridge and Foley Entrepreneurial Center in Waltham, MA.

I’ve detected an emerging “Boston Cloud Swagger” throughout 2011 and increasing in 2012. More companies innovating in the cloud, solving interesting problems, and contributing to the home town technology eco-system. Even in my own presentations, meetings and blogging about Sonian’s cloud accomplishments, my articulation is that of “seasoned cloud veteran,” which reflects Sonian’s commanding lead in the cloud. It’s a swagger well earned through our cloud “trials and tribulations.”

There have been many comparisons between Boston and Silicon Valley start-up scenes. The basic sentiment of the past was there seemed to be more innovation occurring on the West Coast than here in the East. There are certainly more companies in the West, but Boston isn’t far behind with our own growing tech scene created by our universities and deep historical roots in innovation, especially for enterprise IT.

The West Coast does take the lead in number of gatherings where tech folks meet to share ideas. Boston feels more insular. The Valley’s weather provides more year-round opportunities and incentives to make time for meet-ups. Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to head out, after a long day at the office, on a frigid February night to a tech meet-up. There has to be an anticipated reward for the effort.

I feel energized from last nights Cloud Mafia meet-up and will amplify that sentiment by contributing to Boston’s very own Cloud Swagger.