The economics of a cloud infrastructure will give small companies the ability to compete with larger firms on a global scale. Companies will save a lot of money by offloading what has historically been a major expense, to what will amount to a commoditized but very flexible business infrastructure. Because cloud computing applications use the subscription payment model, costs are spread over months or years; they become part of an operating budget instead of a capital budget, and avoid the depreciation costs of capitalized computer equipment. Embracing Cloud computing and SaaS will produce significant cost savings and help drive innovation around workload management.

The dynamic nature of Cloud Computing will give organizations a way to provide the right level of services for strategic initiatives and personal productivity that has never been available before. Commoditized computing capacity and Software Services will also allow IT-Departments to make better decisions of how they use their most valuable commodity , the IT staff themselves.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM are building massive data centers offering computing resources that are scalable and affordable to even the smallest companies. Almost every function of an organization has or will have a SaaS (Software as a Service) option to support it. Collaboration platforms such as WebEx and Salesforce.com will allow companies to increase the speed and efficiency of almost every business processes and allow companies efficient ways to interact with customers.

The appeal of Cloud Computing will inevitable lure all business to leverage some aspects as the pay as you go model , but the advantages offered to smaller companies using Cloud Services may help them lead the way for the near term.

Rich Alessandro