Dry Powder: The Private Equity Podcast
For part two of our tech series, I asked David Crawford, head of Bain’s global Technology practice, to take us into the clouds.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that the single most important innovative force in the tech sector today is the cloud service provider,” he told me on the most recent episode of Dry Powder.
He explained how he helps clients separate the hype from the true value propositions of “hybrid cloud” and “edge computing.” He also explains why these two trends are merely chapters in a much longer story of computing infrastructure.
“Twenty years ago,” David notes, “we had a handful of computers that were connected by routers, and there were all kinds of firewalls and caretaking to just really limit the functionality of all that.”
Today, he says, the walls have come down. Users are free to roam about the enterprise tech space, and they’re moving fast. “If you can come up with a hundred million users, you can scale them globally with the [computing power] you need in a matter of days and weeks.”
Listen to part 1 in this series.
Technology Report 2025
Bain’s inaugural report on the state of the industry examines how leading companies are investing in AI and automation, the hybrid cloud, the Internet of Things, flexible supply chains, virtual sales and other tools to increase resilience and accelerate growth.
The Private Equity Podcast
In our podcast series, Bain's Hugh MacArthur interviews leading experts on the trends and opportunities that will redefine the private equity industry.
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First published in Dezember 2020