In doing my research on security and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) these past few months I ran across a few articles which brought up cloud computing as part of software-as-a-service platforms. I did not go after this angle because it is still not a well developed concept and the overall subject of services was a big enough one for the scope of the paper I was writing. Cloud computing may seem to be the buzzword of the day in the land of things which only exist as press releases but it seems to me to be the latest incarnation since Oracle headman Larry Ellison made his famous pronouncement that “the network is the computer” in the thin versus fat client debate. Locally in this part of West Virginia various GRID computing initiatives have sought to promote distributed processing. There have also been a few high profile programs like SETI@home where users allow their unused CPU cycles analyze radio signals. But the new cloud initiatives have added the factor of commercialization. Both Amazon and Google have rolled out plans to make money on the idea. Larry Dignan at ZDNet put out a good review of the plans last Friday. The geek in me finds the prospect of this bleeding edge technology exciting but MIS is a business major so putting on my more practical information manager hat I find myself more skeptical. I am not sure businesses will want to give up control of such a key function to such an amorphous set up. While have total control over their infrastructure means a huge investment it also provides a sense of security and a level of guarantee of service which management requires.