Today on his blog Nati Shalom asked the following question.

"What are your thoughts on this matter, does cloud computing represent a revolution or an evolution?"

Since I had a post about 1/2 written on this very subject I thought I'd take the cue and finish it.

It is my opinion that Cloud Computing is a technology architecture evolution that, when properly applied to business problems, can enable a business revolution. I've been saying this for a while but in recent weeks I have actually come to prefer the term renaissance over revolution.

One of the primary factors behind this renaissance is the displacement of monetary expenses. This is much more than just a shift from Capital Expense to Operating Expense. Both fixed capital expenses and operational expenses are shifted from where they have been locked up in technology spend for decades to more useful purposes. Once a transition to cloud computing architectures is far enough advanced in a company this displacement of monetary expenses allows more productive uses of company funds. This is true of both start ups and well established enterprises. In what can seem a sudden shift, instead of locking money up in under-utilized servers for years or spending money running your own data centers full of difficult to swallow expenses, the money can be used for things like key hiring people to advance products, deployment of new services, research, marketing, profits, investments, bonuses, or anything else that the direct application of these newly displaced funds might deem useful.

Never before has so much been available so quickly for so little for almost anyone anywhere anytime. Anyone with an idea and the will to execute can get a shot. Cloud Computing is a technology, business, and economic renaissance all in one. How one defines cloud computing does change based on their point of view. This is unfortunately probably inevitable. But, no matter what you call it, it's definitely a powerful trend. Welcome to Renaissance v2.0.