civil disintermediation

Adrian Cockcroft of Netflix has said/tweeted/presented:

IaaS = Ops without Hardware

PaaS = Devs without Ops

SaaS = Business without Devs

Ops getting rid of infrastructure, infrastructure vendors, infrastructure support, infrastructure architects, infrastructure engineers, infrastructure procurement, infrastructure maintenance. Devs getting rid of ops change control, ops provisioning, ops maintenance windows, ops support. Business getting rid of devs and ops and infrastructure.

This is a variety of empowerment. Each group taking a greater hand in its destiny and taking it out of the hands of...  the next group down in their own service supply chain. The cloud is being used as an agent of empowerment. Empowerment through civil disintermediation.

And what if you're that next group down? Maybe, disintermediate yourself.