What you need to know about the year of the cloud

Not many companies have as many servers as Intel, now cloud computing, public or private, is all about scale. With a combination of so then-managed virtualization, data center automation, and self-service tools, each system admin can handle a magnitude more servers -- from an average of around 100 to thousands, according to Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Division.

The hardware companies are betting this dynamic will hold true even in the midmarket. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, launched its Cloudstart solution in August, which combines hardware, software, and professional services to yield fast-track deployments. And Dell, which owns the cloudcomputing.com URL, offers various have-it-your way combinations of professional services and products to accelerate private cloud efforts.

The private cloud

Even Microsoft is venturing into the private cloud. In July, the company announced it was offering Windows Azure -- its public cloud service -- in a box as the Windows Azure Platform Appliance.

Those claims seemed exaggerated then. Nevertheless in October, Microsoft backed them up with the announcement of Office 365, which for the first time wrapped at the same time a locally installed version of Office with Microsoft-hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lynx servers for a single per-seat subscription rate. When Office 365 is ready in 2011, you'll even be able to opt for a version that includes Office Web Apps and no locally installed version of Office whatsoever -- a 100 percent SaaS solution.