What is the future of the software economy?

There are those amongst us who remember the days of punch cards.  The days when the check-out operators at the supermarket had to read the sticky label on each item and punch it in the cash register.  The days when you had to get up to turn your record over to hear the other side.  And when phones could be moved as far as their cords allowed.

Why the sudden burst of nostalgia? - well we suggest that with current changes in technology usage, it will mean that one day you will talk about the time when all your files were stored on your computer - if you were away from it, you couldn't get them.  That you physically commuted into your office with all your other office workers.  And other changes that we can't actually see right now because we're too close to them to see that they may one day be different. And you will talk about all of them as nostagically as the punch cards

The key change taking place at the moment is the mainstreaming of cloud computing.  Since 2006, companies have been steadily introducing more services to the world of cloud computing - "having secure access to all your applications and data from any network device".

Already we see changes where technology has allowed 62% of knowledge workers to work from multiple locations, meaning the days of being tied to one physical location or device are already behind us.

It is this world (or economy) that John Battelle is surveying when he writes Time for New Software Economy.  He states that with the move to the cloud the economy has developed as "a fractured ecosystem lacking a strong economic and technological true north". 

"On the web, we're wanting more robust solutions to problems that are only beginning to surface - I'd pay five bucks a month to someone if they'd solve my social presence problem, for example.  .....

But for such a quality software ecosystem to unfold, we need, as developers, a clearer sense of a platform roadmap, and some certainty as to what portions of the economic pie are open for competition.  ......

Isn't that what the web is supposed to be? Isn't that the promise of the cloud? .....

It is, but for that to work, all those platforms have to be willing to share data and APIs"

How long do you think it will take for a "new software economy" to develop?  And specifically what changes need to happen first to develop this robust platform that Battalle talks about?