Dustin Owens, BT AmericasAs somewhat of a technology-hype curmudgeon, I was until very recently in the camp that believed cloud computing was not much more than the latest marketing-driven hysteria for an idea that has been around for years. Outsourced IT infrastructure services, aka IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), has been around since at least the 1980s, delivered by the telecommunication companies and major IT outsourcers. Hosted applications, aka PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service), were in vogue in the 1990s in the form of ASPs (application service providers). Looking at cloud computing through this perspective had me predicting how many more months it would be before the industry came up with another "exciting" technology with which to generate mass confusion and buzz. But... I have recently been enlightened as to the true potential of cloud computing and have become very excited about it, to say the least. This concept, which has generated the most industry hype in years—and which has executives clamoring for availability because of promises of substantial IT cost savings and innovation possibilities—has finally won me over.
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