A quiet battle of wills has broken out among European policymakers who are pushing competing visions for how to capitalize on the most significant wave of innovation now underway in information technology: cloud computing.
All agree that by creating a new, more efficient architecture for computing, the cloud offers vast economic benefits. It lets enterprises avoid the cost of buying and maintaining some of the IT hardware and software they need to run their operations. Instead, they can have their computing resources delivered over the Internet, as infinitely scalable services. For established companies, this creates cost savings that can be reinvested in the core business. For smaller startups, it represents one less obstacle on the path to growth. (more…)