On the heels of the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Oregon, and recent announcements from Microsoft, now is a good time to address the “state-of-the-state” of enterprise hybrid clouds. Due in large part to burgeoning industry alliances (e.g., OpenStack) and maturing cloud platform technologies (e.g., Microsoft Cloud OS), six technologies have emerged in the enterprise hybrid cloud market that deserve attention:

1. OpenStack
2. VMware vCloud
3. CloudStack
4. Eucalyptus
5. Microsoft Cloud OS
6. Google Cloud Platform

This diagram shows relationships between the leading cloud platforms and public cloud service providers:

Click here for Microsoft Azure IaaS                                        Click here for Google Compute Engine 

Once a customer selects a cloud platform, a private cloud can be deployed behind the enterprise’s firewall or by a service provider via an offsite, hosted service then a public cloud service provider can be selected that supports that particular cloud platform. For example, if OpenStack is the cloud platform of choice, a customer can choose among public cloud service providers like AT&T, Dell, HP, or Rackspace.

5 observations and predictions

So what’s next for the hybrid cloud? After following this developing market with great interest, I’d like to offer several observations and predictions about the industry:

1) OpenStack is the mindshare leader in the open source / open standards hybrid cloud space. Here’s why:

• Momentum - Contributors include major industry players like Ericsson, IBM, HP, Dell, Red Hat, Nebula, Cloudscaling, Piston Cloud, Ubuntu, AT&T, Nimbula (Oracle), SoftLayer, SUSE, Cisco, and VMware. As a result, there are many OpenStack solutions to choose from already
• Wide Adoption – Rackspace, which distributes and is a founding member of OpenStack, has moved aggressively into hybrid cloud, with customers like HubSpot , and partners like Persistent Systems.
• Growth – OpenStack has over 900 job postings
• Vision – OpenStack has made interoperability, or “no vendor lock-in,” an essential feature.
• Its recent announcement of a global cloud network is proof. Plus, Cloudscaling is offering an OpenStack cloud that can burst into Amazon or Google public clouds
• Prediction - OpenNebula, the open source cloud platform founded in Europe, joins the OpenStack Foundation. OpenStack strengthens its European presence. See Cloud Watch for more information.

2) VMware strengthens its vCloud message and markets its own public cloud to expand its proprietary, hybrid cloud solution — leveraging thousands of ESX customers.

3) CloudStack grows and seeks more public cloud partners, in addition to Terremark.

• Prediction – CloudStack establishes a closer, more strategic relationship with AWS to compete more effectively in hybrid clouds.

4) Eucalyptus merges with AWS.

• Prediction – In support of its new $600 million, ten-year CIA contract, AWS purchases Eucalyptus to expand aggressively into enterprise hybrid cloud solutions.

5) Microsoft Cloud OS /Azure IaaS, founded on Windows Server and Windows Azure, is successful.

We’d like to hear from you. Will OpenStack maintain its impressive momentum? Do you believe that CloudStack will make an alliance with AWS? How will Google fare in the enterprise hybrid cloud space? What does this mean for your business? We look forward to your comments.

In concert with these initiatives, private cloud solutions should be evaluated. Businesses pursuing insourcing should benchmark their internal capabilities against external, public cloud alternatives as their infrastructure evolves. Designing flexibility into their on-premise systems in ways that will afford smooth integration with public clouds in the future is important. Also, recruiting talented professionals who understand cloud technologies and are capable of sharing best practices with more seasoned IT experts is critical.

For a large enterprise, internal PaaS (aka, private PaaS) and SaaS solutions should be considered as part of an insourcing project. A suitable internal PaaS solution for the design and deployment of new applications, for instance, would help control application consistency, contain costs, and allow for easier public cloud migrations if needed.

SaaS solutions should be considered in areas not critical to the business’s core mission, such as human capital management (HCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and expense management. Finally, SaaS implementations should be designed to integrate and coexist with a company’s burgeoning private cloud as well.

We’d like to hear from you. Do you believe that private cloud deployments comprise a significant portion of insourcing efforts? How do you best design internal IT architectures that support future migrations to public cloud platforms? We look forward to your comments.

Okay, so what will be the strategic growth areas for these providers? I believe it will be in two primary areas: data center deployments and “SMAC” applications.

The data center race

Google is investing about $2.5 billion per year in data centers, building out capacity quickly to serve customers. Figures from other well-known cloud service providers are difficult to come by, but Google’s quarter-by-quarter data center CapEx is nothing short of astounding.

Other service providers, like Rackspace, are mitigating CapEx risks by deploying a lease-versus-purchase strategy and by partnering with data center developers, like Digital Realty or Equinix.   In the long run, though, how many service providers can keep pace with giants like Google? Not many.

To overcome the CapEx challenge and achieve data center economies of scale, expect infrastructure consolidation to continue since only the largest players with the deepest pockets will be able to afford to compete in the data center race. Service providers such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and HP will continue as standalone entities.

Smaller players, however, will survive by transforming their business models into what Gartner calls cloud services brokerages (CSBs). CSBs will specialize in software customization/development, systems integration, or the aggregation of cloud services from various providers. Hundreds of “new” VARs, SIs, or Managed Service Providers will deliver more intimate, or specialized, IT services.

The SMAC applications race

In 2010, I remember when Frank Gens, Senior VP and Chief Analyst at IDC, outlined four IT growth strategies for service providers, including:  1) Mobile; 2) Social Business; 3) Cloud Computing; and 4) Business Analytics. Then, just recently, I discovered a new acronym called SMAC, which describes similar categories as: Social Media, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud.

SMAC customers range from developers to consumers to businesses. As a society, we’ve become quite familiar with their use cases, with applications in electronic music and videos, social networking, subscription-based application services, cloud storage, and thousands more. So it’s no surprise that SMAC applications will continue to drive enormous demand for new data center capacity and build-out over the next decade.

What this will mean for business

The winning service providers will likely pursue a growth strategy around data center deployments and/or SMAC applications. As a customer, what this means for your business is that you’ll want to:

1. Select service providers that are among the largest, and, therefore, the least likely to go out of business or be acquired (which complicates things).

2. Avoid vendor lock-in so that if a service provider goes out of business or loses its competitive edge you won’t be stuck. (An open source approach is smart here.)

3. Select cloud services brokerages that are expert in your industry, whether it’s for custom software development, systems integration, or aggregation of services. (No CSB can do it all.)

We’d like to hear from you. Do you believe that SMAC will drive service provider growth for the next ten years? How many service providers will be displaced by new entrants? We look forward to your comments.

Let’s face it, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application services make it much easier for small businesses to manage their IT administration and improve IT productivity. When I started my career with IBM in 1985, I called on small business owners constantly, and I know from experience that back then nearly every business owner complained about headaches associated with managing IT:  from new hires walking out the door; to PC networks (Novell, Ethernet, IBM Token Ring, Banyan) that were too darn complex to manage or scale; to unpredictable hardware and maintenance expenses.

Flash forward twenty-seven years. Now we live in a world where just about any small business or startup can literally farm out application and infrastructure services to the cloud. This eliminates laborious and expensive IT administration and allows business owners to truly focus on what they should be focused on:  developing better application solutions for their customers to out-compete incumbent global competitors and deliver better customer service.

Productivity and Competitiveness

A survey commissioned by Microsoft showed that of the small businesses that use the cloud, 41% said they were able to employ more staff in roles that directly benefit sales or business growth, 39% invest in more product development or innovation, and 37% experienced improved agility and competitiveness. The cloud has made it easier for small businesses to scale their business to explore new markets, according to 42% of respondents. And 52% said that using the cloud enabled them to add new solutions and services that benefit their business more quickly and securely.

Small businesses also need ready access to global markets in order to grow and compete against established enterprises. SaaS solutions facilitate this by delivering a wide range of powerful, yet affordable, business or office applications in these areas:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA)
• Revenue performance, corporate performance, and financial planning management
• Office productivity (email and collaboration)
• Marketing / campaign management
• Human capital management (HCM)
• Business intelligence (BI) and reporting
• Website and blog development
• Backup and disaster recovery (DR)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Expense management
• IT service desk

Jeff Kaplan, founder and CEO of THINKstrategies, a consulting services company, points out in the CIO’s Guide to Software-as-a-Service that:

SaaS solutions enable customers to quickly and easily acquire essential business applications without a significant up-front capital investment in perpetual software licenses and additional hardware systems. They also avoid extended deployment cycles and added consulting and support costs. SaaS solutions have also been specifically designed to be more flexible and accessible for a highly dispersed and variable workforce than legacy applications.

SaaS Cost Advantages

In another white paper entitled Cloud Services Opportunity in the SMB Market for Traditional Telecom Service Providers, Gerald J. Canavan illustrates specifically how small businesses have more affordable access to office applications via the cloud (i.e., SaaS), which achieves important savings. Small businesses, for example, have seen their IT costs drop due to SaaS-delivered solutions like Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange email. Take a look at these studies from Microsoft and Osterman Research:

Microsoft 365 Pricing

Microsoft Hosted Exchange Pricing – A Business Case for Hosted Exchange Email

 Finally, McKinsey’s study, Winning in the SMB Cloud, does a good job detailing the positive impact of cloud applications on small business:

With cloud services, small businesses are able to reap the benefits of not having to deploy Email and File Servers, Backup systems and other physical infrastructure as well as local software installations. While this grants an immediate cost benefit to business, cloud services are often subscription-based from month-to-month, so you only pay for what you use, when you use it. When used effectively, it can become the enabler that allows everyone in the business to easily collaborate together on any project, regardless of their computer system, computer software, or geographical location.

 We’d like to hear from you. Do you believe small businesses are taking enough advantage of SaaS applications to improve productivity, competitiveness, and solution development? We look forward to your comments.

1.  Cloud affects the broadest range of customers ever, appealing to businesses, developers, and consumers all over the world;
2. Cloud services are perhaps the most customer-driven solutions in the history of any industry.

Here’s a summary of cloud differentiators:

1. Cloud scale and scope promise lower costs and greater agility

• Apps delivered via the cloud (SaaS) cross many lines of business and include Collaboration, CRM, SFA, HCM, and Expense Management.
• Mission-critical apps requiring more efficient and scalable compute or storage resources are migrating to the cloud, particularly as customer fears regarding security, performance, and availability subside.

2. Passionate developer community

• Developer forums, blogs, and other cloud ISV communities are adamant about collaborating and sharing best practices in order to tackle and solve business problems

3. Customers expect a rich end user experience and high level of performance

• In cloud “culture,” customers expect a robust online experience, period.
• Cloud service providers (CSPs) are proving that they can execute IT services more cost-effectively and flexibly than customers can on-premise.

4. Cloud solutions are services, not hardware or software products, so SLAs must be earned daily by CSPs

• Cloud solutions are delivered as services that take into consideration a customer’s specific data and business process needs.
• Unlike on-premise apps running on local hardware, cloud services are more transferrable, so customers can switch to another CSP when faced with inadequate service levels.

5. Open source accelerates innovation and lowers software licensing costs

• Two open source projects have emerged in the cloud:
  • The OpenStack Foundation, which has 2,700 developers and over 150 member companies, is dedicated to open source code for massively scalable and interoperable cloud compute, storage, and networking;
  • Citrix’s CloudStack solution is the first cloud platform to be submitted to the Apache Software Foundation and has similar goals as OpenStack. Citrix boasts 30,000 community members and hundreds of production clouds.
• Historically, open source movements have increased the pace of innovation and lowered software licensing costs considerably.
• David Linthicum’s recent post offers a description of OpenStack and CloudStack.

6. Cloud helps meet the demands of explosive data growth and analytics

• Cloud storage services can help businesses better manage the multi-terabyte capacity needs of unstructured data, like social media, or other “big data.”
• Big data clouds are emerging to help businesses perform predictive analytics on all kinds of data, providing management with valuable operational insights.
• If you have interest in learning more about predictive analytics topics in the cloud, please check out:  The Cloud Analytics Summit

7. Mobility apps delivered via the cloud are driving exponential productivity gains for consumers

• Hundreds of millions of consumers are taking advantage of the convenience and productivity of smart devices and apps enabled by the “anytime, anywhere cloud.”

Finally, to learn more about how cloud trends are impacting businesses, click here to read this Gartner report.

We’d like to hear from you. For example, is the shift to cloud a seminal shift in IT, or is it just hype? We look forward to your comments (below).

Marlins Mania

A terrific 2012 season is unfolding for Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins:

• New manager:  Ozzie Guillén, is taking over; he is flamboyant and fun.
• New “baseball-only” stadium:  This April, Marlins Park, a state-of-the-art, $389 million dollar facility, opens its doors featuring a retractable roof to protect from sultry weather conditions.

Leverage Customer Communities to Ignite E-Commerce, Campaign Development, and Sales

The Miami Marlins would be wise to implement social networking tools for the creation of “fan communities.” To illustrate this, I’d like to highlight some insights from two industry analysts featured in a February 27^th report entitled:  The Gartner CRM Team Perspective on Customer Communities.

Social Communities Drive Campaigns – Kim Collins

• Customer communities help marketers quickly validate new service concepts and campaigns at lower costs than traditional media (e.g., television ads).
• Customer communities can help target loyalty programs and promotions, which fosters a more intimate connection with customers.

Sports Franchise Use Case:  Golden State Warriors – Patrick Stakenas

• Fan communities can be leveraged to increase revenue through generation of qualified leads.
• The NBA’s Golden State Warriors leveraged social media communities on its proprietary Web and Facebook to host a promotion, investing only $5,000, which led to:
  • 102 new season tickets sold to contest registrants.
  • 291 new mini-plans sold to contest registrants.
  • An increase in sales of $440,000!

We’d like to hear from you. For example, will sports teams that fail to use fan communities and social media have fewer campaign successes and less fan loyalty? We look forward to your comments (below).

This wide array of configuration options is what I think IT professionals and others will find most striking about Cloud Architect. It is important to have the structure to support all major hypervisors, including VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. A multitude of operating systems are supported, like CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. Deployment models cover public, private, dedicated and “bare metal” servers.

Perhaps most intriguing is how rapidly applications can be deployed. Within five minutes, deployment for public or private instances and bare metal servers can occur. Dedicated servers deploy within two-to-four hours.

I’m curious, however, to see how AT&T and other leading cloud service providers, like Verizon-Terremark, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, take steps to create even greater value for themselves and their customers through the combination of their IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) capabilities and SaaS (Software as a Service) or mobile apps. Surely, “pure IaaS providers” risk being commoditized and put out of business otherwise.

Ponder these IDC predictions for 2012 to see what I’m getting at:

1. Cloud services adoption will exceed $36 billion, up 28% in 2012, growing four times faster than the industry overall. Almost two-thirds of spending will be on IT and SaaS applications, but only one-quarter will be on IaaS.
2. Almost half of all mobile apps developed in 2012 will be connected to, and integrated with, key cloud application platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, Force.com, etc.
3. Almost three-quarters of all mobile apps developed in 2012 will be integrated with enterprise application services, including Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.

So what does this mean for service providers, like AT&T, Verizon-Terremark, Rackspace or Amazon Web Services?

I think it means that in order to thrive in the cloud over the next several years, service providers will need to create their own fertile ecosystems, where mobile- and web-based app developers seek an innovative environment and community. IDC believes that these ecosystems need to provide toolkits and support services to developers also. I agree, but I think an enormous amount of value can be unlocked for all parties — developers, customers and service providers — when SaaS solutions are integrated with service providers’ cloud services into compelling bundles.

Click here for more information on AT&T’s Cloud Architect.

We’d like to hear from you. For example, do you think diverse buyer types will embrace AT&T’s Cloud Architect? How do you define a fertile ecosystem? We look forward to your comments (below).

Here are six ways that startups can hyper-bootstrap using cloud services:

1. Lower Startup Costs – By renting IT services, startups avoid the CapEx (capital expenditures) associated with compute/storage/networking hardware, and reduce OpEx (operating expenses) related to IT staff and maintenance.

2. Communication and Collaboration – Cloud services, like email and conferencing, allow startups to keep in closer touch with their employees, suppliers, and customers via any device cost-effectively.

3. Rapid Product Development – ISVs, for example, harness cloud services on-demand for scale-up/scale-down agility, performance, and lower cost.

4. Speed to Market – Cloud services allow startups to target customers more quickly and meet customer requirements more effectively.

5. Global Market Penetration – Cloud services allow startups to access global markets and take advantage of the explosive growth occurring in developing economies.

6. Increased Productivity – Cloud services deliver economical, pay-as-you-grow application software. Startups pay as their business grows, perhaps on a monthly basis, for SaaS-based productivity applications, including ERP, HRM, CRM, expense management, and secure data backup.

For more anecdotes, please check out Joe McKendrick’s recent article in Forbes:  How Cloud Computing is Fueling the Next Startup Boom.

We’d like to hear from you. What do you see as differences between traditional ISV service and SaaS? Do you see many ISVs seriously considering SaaS as a business model? We look forward to your comments (below).

SaaS Adoption

Many Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are considering whether or not to SaaS-enable, or “SaaS-ify”, their application services and business models, especially since some high profile SaaS ISVs have succeeded wildly . For example, Salesforce.com, the best known SaaS company, has over 100,000 customers, nearly $2 billion in revenue, and offers compelling value propositions and ROIs to IT departments that make purchasing decisions no-brainers.

Some common application characteristics have surfaced among ISVs that have pivoted successfully to SaaS. It turns out that “self-service, employee-facing” applications are relatively easy to migrate to the cloud. These include applications like Salesforce.com’s CRM, Concur’s travel and expense management, or Taleo’s skills management solutions, where the SaaS purchaser is comfortable implementing specific, subscription-based application services for their employees. Other kinds of SaaS applications usually don’t require a lot of customization, legacy integration, and are not considered mission-critical.

SaaS-ification, however, is not appropriate for many ISVs. A recent report by Forrester Research found that only 25% of the global software market would be disrupted by SaaS. This makes sense since many of today’s on-premise applications would require a good amount of customization or legacy integration. Other applications are considered too mission-critical or must comply with industry regulations and laws. So it seems that customers want to avoid lengthy or risky migrations yet don’t mind straight-forward, SaaS-based add-ons.

The SaaS Business Model Is About Services

Even when applications are well-suited to SaaS delivery, an ISV’s transition to a profitable subscription-based business is risky and can take several years. SaaS marketing and business models differ from those of the traditional, license/on-premises ISVs. Entirely new challenges must be met for an ISV to achieve SaaS market success. Since SaaS applications are viewed as on-demand services, ISVs need to deliver value on a weekly or even daily basis. Examples include a delightful end user “experience” and customer care services like metering, billing, contract management, and SLA assurances. An ISV is also expected to provide more frequent application updates.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that an ISV can no longer “install and run” and then expect a 20%+ annual maintenance fee in perpetuity. In the SaaS model, upfront revenue at the initial sale is much smaller since it is billed monthly, so carefully managing operating costs is crucial. New forms of creative financing, like a line of credit contingent upon future SaaS revenue streams, may be required from leasing companies to provide necessary working capital — and many ISVs may not qualify.

Don’t Count ISVs Out Of SaaS Just Yet

In spite of data compliance and security concerns, I suspect that many customers are asking ISVs about SaaS since there has been so much industry hype. As these concerns get resolved through new contractual agreements and industry standards, why wouldn’t customers want to take advantage of SaaS benefits like frequent updates, easier deployments, “pay-as-you-grow” flexibility, and lower CapEx?

My bet is that many license/on-premise ISVs will take a second look at SaaS over the next few years. Also, don’t be surprised to see ISVs SaaS-ify their applications as cloud service providers (CSPs) continue to improve their capabilities in areas like security and regulatory compliance. In other words, as more ISVs “trust the cloud” and strive to meet customers’ self-service demands, they will choose the SaaS model to remain competitive.

We’d like to hear from you. What do you see as differences between traditional ISV service and SaaS? Do you see many ISVs seriously considering SaaS as a business model? We look forward to your comments (below).

Benefits to Government

Over the past ten years, the number of federal data centers has grown from 498 to more than 1,200. Earlier this year the Federal Government launched their Data Center Consolidation Initiative, the cornerstone of which is cloud computing. The Federal Government understands the efficiencies and transformative benefits of cloud computing, like:

• Reducing data center carbon footprints.
• Reducing wasted real estate.
• Improving data center energy efficiency.
• Improving inter- and intra-agency communication.
• Improving outward-facing public services by consolidating data and enabling browser access.

The Federal Government not only “gets it” but is an early adopter. In his February 2010 memo, Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer, explained:

The Data Center Consolidation Initiative is broken down into 6 key phases and is designed to first assess and inventory the current agency environment and then establish a plan for achieving significant reductions in data center built through the use of server virtualization and Cloud Computing technologies.  Additionally, this initiative aims to reduce overall energy consumption by data centers across the Federal Government, while reducing the physical real estate and other key costs drivers associated with data centers.

Benefits to Society

According to Bill Drayton, CEO, and Valeria Budinich, founder, of Ashoka, a global association of leading social entrepreneurs:

The time is ripe for collaboration between for-profit businesses and mission-driven individuals and organizations, or citizen-sector organizations (CSOs). Collaborations between corporations and CSOs (many of whom are entrepreneurs) can create and expand markets on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. These markets will reach everyone, but especially the 4 billion people who are not yet part of the world’s formal economy. Since the 1980s, for example, the citizen sector has been creating jobs about three times as fast as have other employers in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. In Brazil, the number of CSOs rose from about 36,000 to nearly a million over the past 20 years. In the United States, their number has grown by more than 300% since 1982.

By making it easier and less costly for CSOs to access computer resources and to collaborate with for-profit businesses or corporations, it stands to reason that free market clouds should help to fuel positive, collaborative results (e.g., job creation) between people in need and private business.

Threats to a Thriving Cloud Computing Ecosystem

The two most obvious threats to a thriving cloud ecosystem are:

1. Natural monopolies occurring within cloud service providers.
2. Too much government regulation.

Among cloud computing service providers today, there is intense competition. The players can be described as being fragmented. Inevitably, there will be a shake-out as the business matures, which can lead to the “winners” being only the largest cloud service providers.

The reason for this is that there are profound financial and operational economies of scale for cloud service providers as they build out their infrastructure for clients — efficiency improvements of 5-10X have been estimated for large, well-run cloud data centers vs. traditional on-premise data centers.

For example, Amazon Web Services, which just celebrated its fourth anniversary,  broke through the $500 million revenue threshold in 2010. UBS estimates that Amazon Web Services’ net income will expand roughly 50-70% each year through 2014, a truly incredible business model. The point is that Amazon Web Services has become a powerful engine for profit and cash generation due to its large scale.

Other competitors, such as Level 3 Communications, IBM, CA, HP, Rackspace, CenturyLink/Savvis, and Verizon/Terremark are trying to catch-up to Amazon Web Services’ scale (perhaps some have already), and they should be able to compete toe-to-toe successfully into the future. Smaller cloud service providers, however, are likely to disappear over the next decade. Less competition in any business leads to less choice and higher prices for clients, so this could become a threat when the cloud service provider industry undergoes consolidation in the future.

History has proven that too much government regulation in any business sector is damaging to its growth and continued success. On government regulations in a free market economy, Friedrich Hayek, the renowned economist argued that:

Government regulations will always limit the scope of experimentation and thereby obstruct what may be useful developments. They will normally raise the cost of production or, what amounts to the same thing, reduce over-all productivity.http://ow.ly/5PTSD

Hayek, therefore, prescribed the avoidance of “factory legislation” whenever possible.

Similarly, Alfred Chandler and Richard Tedlow, business historians at Harvard, reaffirmed Hayek’s thinking:

Most regulation occurs at the borderlands of politics, law, and economics, and those who have shaped its evolution have come from these three fields. Of the three, the first two have tended to overshadow the third, and considerations of politics and legal process have customarily triumphed over those of economic efficiency.

The bottom line: Government shouldn’t regulate free market clouds much.

Wrap-Up

Time will tell whether free market clouds will reinvigorate the beneficial, pro-growth economic forces of capitalism, which began in England around 1760 with the invention of the steam engine for coal mining. For skeptical readers who doubt the merits of capitalism, please remember these historical facts:

• Per capita income in the West was flat for 1,000 years prior to industrialization and market economies.
• Per capita income in the West rose by 20% in the 1700s.
• Per capita income in the West rose by 200% in the 1800s.
• Per capita income in the West rose by 740% in the 1900s.

My hope is that business, government, and society will continue to create fertile ecosystems for cloud computing to thrive, just as many Western market economies have done for capitalism for 250 years.

Take a look at Part I of the series.

So what do you think?  Let us know how you see Cloud Computing spurring growth for organizations from private companies to government organizations.  What has been your experience?  We look forward to getting your comments on this important topic.