The Web brought us the democratization of content. Cloud Computing will do the same for applications. That will be one of my key themes for the Cloud Computing panel this afternoon at the Wharton Business Technology conference (that’s assuming that my Acela which is already 30 minutes late will make it to Philly in time). Prior to the Web, to get a piece of content out to the world required going through some gatekeeper like a publisher for books or a label for music. Now anyone can post content and reach the world. The Web theoretically made the same true for applications through web delivered functionality, but two important constraints applied: first scaling was hard and second everyone was building stovepipes. Cloud computing will remove both of these constraints. First, we are getting close to where developers can focus almost entirely on what their application does and spend very little time on how to scale it as more and more users sign up. We are not there yet, but the progress over the last couple of years has been simply astounding. Second, whether by choice or by enduser demand, applications in the cloud are all exposing APIs. Instead of stovepipes it is now possible to create a new application by focusing only on the new pieces and easily integrating with all the existing services. Both of these will vastly reduce the effort required to deliver a an application to anyone in the world. That is the democratization of applications. No more gatekeepers for applications - and I am aware those used to include VCs …