Does Cisco Have Its Head in the Clouds? - John Sviokla - HarvardBusiness.org

Interesting article on the business reasons for chasing a cloud market.

Many pundits are railing about Cisco's move into the server market because the company's current gross margins are 10-20% less in the server market than in their core router market. What these critics miss is that the evolution of computing is to create corporate clouds of functionality and storage — and those who control the architecture of the cloud will dominate the commercial relationship.

Read the entire article for the rationale. I agree with Mr Sviokla's list of reasons why cloud computing is more "doable" than previous attempts, although he left off one valuable innovation, the ability to provide rich interfaces through light-weight clients (e.g., browsers). Web-based application interfaces like JavaScript, AJAX, and RIAs allow software vendors to develop applications that can be delivered over the Internet to lightweight clients. This takes the guessing work of what the user has on the receiving end-point so that vendors can offer capabilities to a broader audience.

Does Cisco Have Its Head in the Clouds? - John Sviokla - HarvardBusiness.org