Is Cloud Computing Mainstream?

Well, not yet. But by now you've probably heard of the deal between IBM and Google to provide an initial 6 universities (University of Washington in Seattle, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley and University of Maryland) with hardware to allow students to program to the cloud.

But this just accelerates my prediction that the concept of "cloud computing" will quickly mature. Folks are beta-testing Amazon's (somewhat fault-prone) EC2 and S3, upon-which anything from components (i.e. queuing services) to entire website storage, can be hosted.

So now, students will be educated in this form of programming, and go into industry with a new level of comfort with this paradigm. This will surely turn the hosting market on its ear in 1-2 years.