Jon Oltsik over at cnet News has an interesting article where he tries to define the various aspects of Cloud Computing.  Generally, I agree with most aspects of this article.  However, I have to take issue with the assumption that Cloud Infrastructure will remain a small area.

Cloud Infrastructure is already a fairly sizeable business today and I only see it growing larger.  The article states that the author believes Software as a Service is the area that will see the largest growth.  I agree.  However, what the author fails to realize is that a significant portion, if not most, of the developers putting out Software as a Service applications will be using Cloud Infrastructure services from others such as Amazon to build out and launch their apps.

Why shouldn’t SaaS developers take advantage of the economies of scale that the infrastructure providers have?  It makes no sense for them to reinvent the wheel by deploying their own datacenters when someone else has already done all the work for them and will continue to maintain it effectively.  This allows the developers to concentrate on their core competency, which is their software services.  This is one of the same reasons many businesses want to use Cloud Services in the first place: it allows them to focus on what they do best and not have to worry about IT.

I believe that the future is pretty bright for the Cloud Services industry.