If you were to consider two adjectives that most define Red-shift it would be easy to select "Growth" and "Innovation". Growth is the fundamental descriptor for the premise of being "under served" by Moore's Law. I would propose Innovation is the primary driver of Growth. The reason for this is the type of Growth needed to be a "Red=shift" workload cannot be created by incremental improvement on existing products/services.

So Innovation is the fire that is powering the Red-shift. So what is stoking the fire!

Lets take and short detour and catalog the key characteristics of the Open Source Software (OSS) movement. We can quickly identify;

The result is the OSS movement has put an exponential amount of features and functionality in the hands of a wider and more diverse group (eg. globally, industry, background, market) of entrepeneurs. So you can picture the combustible material resulting from the reaction of combining the ideas of this large group of people with the expanded ability to execute through software. Important to note that OSS is not only the tools to execute, it is a reactive agent. People need raw material to create ideas, which is most often a combination of information and personal experience. The OSS community not only feeds from these ideas but is a significant contributor by putting in features that are executed in unique ways.

So the spark of Innovation is created by mixing the features/functions with wealth of ideas. But what is sustaining the fire ?

The answer might exist by looking at the first wave of "Red shifted" demand. The Internet boom provided access to a completely new route to market for service. As described above, the same scenario existed to connect ideas to execution. The two barriers to execution at the time were technical capability and access to physical infrastructure.

It is true the foundation of the Internet was HTML, but to build something functional and architecturally significant, you needed to speak the languages of Java, PHP and SQL etc... So unlike this generation, the "Red Shift" was dampened by the fact that execution required the use of traditional developer tools and knowledge of programing. As a result, the education system created a combustible natural resource of developers and university graduates with a higher level of technical competence and knowledge of the "new economy". A material that has laid dormant during the infamous .COM "bust".

The deployment barrier of infrastructure was also lowered by the first .COM boom. New meanings were created for the words "Start up", "Going public" and the general public started to learn about the business of private and public investment. This wealth of money was driven into an unprecedented investment in the Internet and the infrastructure that supports it. The new-economy drove Moore's Law for many years and resulted in commoditizing access to processing infrastructure. The top line trend was an initial huge browth in processing capability (CPU, storage density, network bandwidth) during the boom, then with the bust, a large reduction in cost.

So courtesy of the first boom, the barrier for execution of processing infrastructure is small.

The final note is the OSS movement is not just delivering end user features/functionality. A natural trend in all forms of technology is to constantly improve usability so to address the broadest segment of the target market. OSS is no different, the trend is reducing the barrier for execution by making the software that allows you to realized the "ideas" easier to use.

So we can conclude, there is loads of combustible material in the form of developers and MBA's with the knowledge and creativity and a wealth of infrastructure capable of carrying innovation through the critical concept and market entry stages (high cost, low revenue). The OSS movement has created the spark to ignite this material with an unequaled frequency and ferocity. So OSS is fueling the fire of Innovation which is powering the engine of Growth that drives the "Red Shift" :)