Cloud computing isn’t free. What you save in buying machines you pay in bandwidth access. If your number crunching needs are limited, but data access needs are large, cloud computing makes no sense at all. There are also issues of control. Gmail goes down sometimes, not often, but sometimes and being able to control one’s own system and prioritize repair is fairly important to the industries he lists.

If on the other hand you’re trying to do gene sequencing or something like it where the amount of processing is gigantic but the data flow is small, cloud computing is a great solution.

I understand the question was answered by implicitly listing major industries, airlines banks governments etc.. but that is like asking if the internet would challenge our paradigms, how we get our news, how we bank, how we buy books and implying the an answer anything other then no would be stupid.

This is the typical egocentric head in the sand response you might expect from IBM; 20 years ago.

To think that cloud computing or Google can’t come of age and meet the needs of global enterprise is just naive.