Tug of War | the battle between hardware & software

The battle has really been waging for years - which is better at performance, which really drives innovation.  The hardware guys like to point out that "without hardware, and the advances of optimization, virtualization and performance of the full hardware chain (servers, storage, network) there would be no advances in software".  And of course, the comeback from software is "it's must pipes-n-sewers, software drives what we do with it, without software, hardware is just a pile of junk".

And so the war wages on.  Cloud has done nothing to slow down this war, in fact, it has added fuel to the fire.  Where would be we be without fast processors, switching and storage...and where would be without the applications that take full advantage of this hardware, turning a single "machine" into a dozen?

So who is really pushing who - or is it really a tug of war - both sides pulling against each other?  And what happens in a tug of war if one side lets go?  The other side falls down.  The key with our Hardware versus Software battle is to keep up a high level tension, without one side being too strong.  We don't want a winner in this war, we want an ongoing competitive struggle, between the forces of hardware and software - we need the battle to continue to wage, for both sides to have a sense of "being able to win" along with an underlying dose of "but I might loose".  

It's a balance.  One side can get slightly ahead, but never too far.  The other side, then needs to rise to the challenge.  If this world of technology ever gets out of balance, it will be because the advances of either the hardware or software has gone too far.