My O'Reilly post - Java in the Cloud

No one is talking about the Web 2.0, AJAX, SaaS, or SOA these days. It doesn't mean that no one is using these technologies, it is just that these are not the buzzwords anymore. The latest buzzword is "Cloud Computing". Every one is talking about building apps in cloud or moving the apps to cloud. There are plenty of jobs on job boards looking for the people with the skills: "familiarity with cloud" or "expertise in cloud". What is the cloud? Every one defines the cloud in their own way, here is my take on it. Companies whose main business is not Computer related, they outsource their IT work to some computer consulting firm. It is because IT is not their main business and some times it makes sense to hand it over. Similarly, for application development companies - the focus is application development, not hosting the applications. In addition to the application developers, they need to have IT people, hardware to host the apps. For some companies it makes sense to outsource the IT and hardware. In other words, you are outsourcing your application to a different company. Application outsourcing used to be to hosting companies, but that's changing to the cloud due to its infrastructure. The cloud makes it very easy to scale an app for rapid growth compared to the hosting companies. Cloud will take away all the hardware management and IT risks from you. Continue reading at http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/12/java-in-the-cloud.html