I feel that an often overlooked aspect of Cloud Computing is the huge impact it's having on startups. We're witnessing an era of unprecedented growth and potential for small companies. I would even dare to say that the Cloud is underhyped. Never before have startups had the ability to quickly scale up and down and access such incredible amounts of raw computing power. With the continuing advances in the mobile and tablet market the market for apps and SaaS continues to rapidly expand. With a combination of market access and ease of development, cloud and mobile development are literally changing the software ecosystem as we know it. We live in a world where a 10th grader in Kuna, Idaho can create an app and sell it online instead of getting a summer job.
Some will argue that the Cloud is getting too much undeserved attention. Every conference these days has someone talking about the Cloud. Marketers for better or for worse are also cued in on the trend as evidenced by the new term "Cloudwashing".
Finally, with Microsoft's Cloud commercials it appears that the Cloud has finally gone mainstream. I think most of these miss the mark. I will tell you folks, the Cloud is real, and simply put, the Cloud is Democratizing our digital lives. My prediction? In 5 years we'll look back and wonder why we didn't realize we were in a sea change in the first place.