Yes, I know, I know. “Cloud Computing” has been talked about and actually used for some time now by many companies, my favorite being 37 Signals with their products. We at extensionEngine use Basecamp for project management and Highrise as a CRM and if you look closely, you can see Amazon’s Cloud powering the whole thing with terrific alacrity. What I mean is that the amount of money and effort behind the various Clouds has reached such a critical mass that we’ll all start considering a Cloud option whenever we build something. And then, in a few years, I think it won’t really be an option – it will be the way we talk about hardware. Very few benefits will remain to manage, let alone OWN (God forbid) a Server. Your children (or grandchildren) will laugh as you regale them with stories about how you spent thousands, millions of dollars buying, configuring, mirroring, backing up, securing, powering, etc. etc. your own servers.

The reason for this post is this article, outlining the 100 Coolest Cloud Vendors. 100! CoolEST! Meaning that there must be 1 or 2 HUNDRED Cloud vendors out there that presumably are uncool. Sad for them, but that kind of goldrush is likely to produce a lot of very cool, and very good technology that we’ll all benefit from.