Cloud cover Max Effgen, January 29, 2011 Joke: “Why did it take God 7 days to create the Earth?” Answer: “Because He did not have the install base.” This “joke” was all too common in my house growing up. Dad ran an enterprise software company. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all competing for the cloud. Each is taking a different approach. Google is targeting the enterprise through its application suites and the ability to host email through Gmail. It is a very cool feature that I use and love. It is much more consistent than the Microsoft offering that I also use to access my University of Washington accounts. I do have to question the readiness of the enterprise and the cloud; however, when I see advertisements from Google touting their enterprise presence with a customer list full of universities. It is more likely that the raw horsepower of the cloud that Amazon provides is the immediate future of the enterprise. Applications will evolve from that. Interestingly enough Amazon launched Simple Email Service (SES) into the AWS family this week. cloud cloudthoughts