Cloud Computing

The idea is starting to gain some steam, just look at these numbers and you would be crazy not to at least look into cloud computing -

"company that could spend $4 million to buy 150 servers plus $1 million in annual software license fees. Contrast that with the Amazon cloud services fee of $131,000 a year for everything—a price not much more than the $70,000 a year that would be needed just to keep the in house servers powered up."

The prediction is that

"companies that combine a private in-house cloud for mission-critical operations while using the public cloud for more routine back-office work and heavy-duty computing"

I see that working for large companies, but for smaller startups who can't afford an IT staff, I see them moving entirely to cloud computing. Who is more likely to keep your mission critical systems running, a team of hundreds of IT professionals who build and maintain a cloud computing architecture, or a loan IT professional who supports your small business?

Thanks to Todd Woody for a great write up - http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/03/09/Todays-Weather-Report