The point I’m trying to make is that whatever limitations a cloud or grid has have to be understood – and not just because you’ve read the marketing flyers. You actually need to re-architect your application, your developers, the development/test/release process and probably your internal cross-charging models as well. That’s a considerably different proposition to the overly-simplistic “just stick it in the cloud and we’ll save money” approach that the current hype engenders.

As you say, clouds offer some fantastic opportunities. But right now, you need to do quite a bit of your own engineering to really make use of them. Unfortunately though, you’ll be side-tracked by news that some big player or other has cancelled it’s cloud projects because of spiralling costs, or elongated timescales, or poor returns. If you can stick it out through all of that and play your technical cards right, the rewards could be significant.