In the last few years it seems like clouds are filling our IT skies, bringing with them the promise of many cost-effective IT alternatives.

What is this cloud computing? Is it real? The answer is yes, it is very real and it is here to stay. So what is it? In very simple words, cloud is a code name or a buzzword for IT and Business process capabilities delivered over the Web.

Some, amongst them Larry Ellison, will say so what? Nothing new, we’ve been doing that for ages. They’ve got a point of course – especially when you remember the days of centralized computing and IBM terminals – but still, there are some fundamental changes.

Virtualization, Multitenancy, computing and communication technologies have advanced so much, enabling realization of centralized, shared over-the-web computing like never before, driving high adoption and the biggest change in the technology world in more than a decade. The result: major changes in delivery models, in business models and in purchasing and consumption models.

To borrow from President Obama’s “This is what change looks like,” this is what cloud change looks like:

1. Multiple alternatives.
2. Multiple vendors.
3. Easy and quick to buy and to activate, or to disconnect.
4. Multiple mix-and-mach options to deliver the required business value at an effective cost.

In this new world of cloud computing, the CIO can’t just focus on operations – he or she must manage business alternatives. The good old cost value economic decisions need to be made every single day.

Lucky enough, this is what we at Digital Fuel do for a living. Whether infrastructure, application, business process cloud; private, public or hybrid, in-house or external, we help enterprises manage IT cost and value.

These clouds are shedding blessed rain on our fields. We are very grateful for that.