I have already blogged here about "meta-products" and "meta-vendors." By its nature, cloud computing is a classic example of R=G. Even "private clouds" are likely to be hosted on a heterogeneous collection of servers that are geographically dispersed, for security and redundancy if nothing else. And also by its nature, cloud computing is strongly "meta." But what are the "meta" implications of cloud computing for N=1?

For "platform as a service" (PaaS), the platform being offered must be flexible, and offer as rich an environment as possible for running hosted software, in order to accommodate N=1. The "N" in this case is a software provider that wants to offer software to run on the cloud platform. Ideally, the platform will be a full-fledged meta-environment whose functionality is mapped efficiently to the underlying host hardware. This is very similar to the implications of hardware virtualization; in fact, PaaS can be viewed (and implemented) as a virtualized operating system that runs on heterogeneous hardware, but with additional functionality that makes the collection of operating system instances appear seamless (as a "cloud"). With enough flexibility, the PaaS meta-vendor can co-create the cloud environment with the
customer.

For software as a service (SaaS), the emphasis for the offered software services must be on flexibility and tailorability. It is even more important for SaaS vendors to be (and offer) "meta" than for traditional software vendors. In this case, the "N" in N=1 is the end user of the software offered as a service. To achieve the best results, the SaaS meta-vendor must co-create that software service with the customer.

IMHO, cloud computing (and its children, PaaS and SaaS) will further drive the move to "meta," and I strongly advise vendors that hope to compete in the cloud computing market to grasp, embrace, and drive the "meta" concept as quickly as they can.