“Black box” refers to a term coined by IBM’s PC. This PC was first introduced August 12, 1981. It used an 8088 processor and could access up to 1 megabyte of RAM. More than 50 new businesses came on the market prior to the release of the IBM PC in 1981. Over the years, as many companies have replicated IBM’s PC, only a handful have survived. Companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo are now market leaders in the server and PC space. This has been directly related to the power of the name brand that these companies have created.

While name brand is still important in some respects, it’s not as meaningful as it once was. Cloud computing is now taking hold and these name brands will be increasingly insignificant as businesses move to the cloud. Cloud computing is expected to more than double during the next six years, from 37 percent to nearly 80 percent Read more