• No need for hardware and software on premise
• Reduced efforts for administration and governance
• No idle hardware consuming electricity

While Software-as-a-Service covers the application part, cloud computing is more about the hardware topics covering cpu, storage and network. I see both as the two extremes with several other buzzy things in between like Platform-as-a-Service, Mash-Ups and Next-Generation-Hosting. The baseline seems to be quite clear and the multitude of offerings is immense. So no one needs to question Gartner top ten predictions for IT organization <LINK> earlier this year. One question from my side is: Isn’t this a little bit too conservative? Is this only true for IT-organizations? Doesn’t other industries have margin pressure as well?

Especially predictions No 4

By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license.[...]

and No 5

By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service.[...]

are really compelling – just image the market size we are talking about….

Just to give you some brainfood: Salesforce meets GoogleApps

Roland