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>I'm also talking about consumers and users being two different companies. For example, I wrote the Timecard WS, and thousands of compaines around the world hit it.
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SNIP

Well I'd hazard a guess that most people using time cards consider their processing THE mission-critical aspect of their company < s >

I see where you're coming from though, and it may well come to pass, even for mission-critical, faster than any one of us expects. I see two primary issues:
1) reliability. . . for both the communications AND the service itself;
2) security.

Then there is (really) the crucial issue of how will MS "deploy" the whole thing. I know that things 'can' be done today, but I think that MS can take its sweet time for the SERIOUS stuff. I still think that "the cloud" is intended to be a MS proprietary entity. How MS (tries to) make this the reality dictates, in my mind, when serious stuff can take flight.