Our local paper, the Boston Globe,  covered cloud computing this weekend with a nice piece by Scott Kirsner, "Entrepreneurs look to the clouds."  Kirsner's article covered a number of local companies, including Assembla client Sonian Networks.  I have also seen recent cloud computing write-ups in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist.  In short, the mainstream media are lagging the tech community by about a year.  Yet from Kirsner's article, we can see what they think is important about this space, how it is trending, and how we can make our contribution more important..

VC Larry Bohn is assertive in stating "The way I look at it, we're seeing the total destruction of the data center."  Compared with products delivered out of a fixed corporate datacenter, products delivered out of the cloud should be better (because they are forced  to compete directly with other cloud services), faster (because they don't wait around for hardware upgrades), and cheaper (because they are spread over a bigger  user base).

Given these advantages, Assembla is trying to expand the types of services that you can obtain from the cloud. 

At its essence, "cloud computing" refers most directly to the idea that you can get a virtual server out of a datacenter, on demand.  Look for us to implement that basic capability with a "Server" tool that provides a virtual server, complete with a "Deploy" button. 

 In our view, cloud computing also refers to the wetware - the individuals and teams - that you pull out of the global Internet cloud to work on your projects.  We've already delivered a lot of the management tools that make this work productively.  In the next few weeks you will see us integrate some of the major staffing services that can help you pull this talent on demand. 

A lot of these services go into the development of other cloud services, so there is the potential for an accelerating feedback loop.

The Globe piece also quotes Cloudswitch chief executive Ellen Rubin noting that "Cloud computing seems to be fueled by the recession, when you have companies looking carefully at their budgets... Instead of buying hardware and software that must be listed as large, one-time capital expenses, paying a monthly fee for cloud services is a smaller, ongoing expense."

I am not sure that I totally agree with Rubin.  If paying a monthly fee is the driver, then leasing would be the hot topic, not cloud computing.  Computer leasing was a very hot topic in 1969.  Big, creditworthy customers now have all sort so financing mechanisms for turning purchases into monthly payments. However, Assembla, and Assembla's customers, who are often smaller vendors of SaaS and cloud services, have to look at this from the other side.  It's the vendor that finances the hardware and software in the cloud model.  The customers are pushing the financing job out to the vendors, creating a problem that I would like to cover in our next blog article.  We need to enhance the ability of our customers, small companies providing cloud services, to borrow money and finance this investment.