>>>Obviously it is something Microsoft is promoting heavily. I receive MSDN Magazine in the mail, as I'm sure you do, too, and it has been running endless articles about cloud computing lately.
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>These big vendors may not be telling their minions yet, but they know perfectly well that the next Microsoft will be one of the cloud providers. Which shows how corrupt IT has become. Imagine if hip replacement manufacturers sought to take over all the hospitals and started awarding surgical degrees to promote/compel sales of their products. There would be an outcry and surgeons would band together to punish the vendor who tried to coerce the market and dis-empower the professionals. Boy, we developers are wimps and look what we've allowed. In a real market, the profession would anoint its own experts and system manufacturers would compete for the business of cloud providers who would compete for customers who probably wouldn't care much about the tech at the other end as long as it works. Control of every level would be a dream.

And the ability to "shut it down" a nightmare... :o)