Opportunities in Cloud ComputingVirtual 'cloud' holding space is replacing hard-drive-based PC storage.
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The barren Santa Susana Mountains loom behind InfoStreet's offices in Tarzana, California. The topic of Microsoft comes up, and CEO Siamak Farah alights like a hillside wildfire. With its free online applications, Google is supplanting Microsoft as the king of desktops. This, he says, "is a paradigm shift."
Everything from spreadsheets to file storage is moving from hard-drive-based PCs to the internet's "cloud," a virtual storage space and software holding tank. What's in the cloud so far? Services from Google's Gmail to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, rental servers to Info-Street's own StreetSmart-to name a few. Cloud computing is booming: It's expected to reach $10.7 billion this year. Salesforce, the leader in SaaS, has a growing customer base. IBM, Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard have all invested in cloud technology. Even Microsoft has gone to the cloud with Windows Azure.
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