Single-Purpose Clouds: Pro and Con

Stacey at GigaOm writes about HP's view of the cloud: "HP appears to see the benefits of cloud computing as a way for vendors to deliver a single service, kind of like having a single chef make the world’s supply of macaroni and cheese," Stacey writes. "The providers behind these monolithic clouds could scale while still making a profit and offer service guarantees because they would control the infrastructure."

Gartner's Lydia Leong is skeptical: "I think that it’s highly-unlikely that we’ll see super-specialization in the cloud," she writes. "There are, of course, software vendors today who make highly specialized components ... But as software companies get more ambitious, the scope of their software tends to broaden, too. ... I don’t think successful software companies will confine themselves to delivering single applications as a service."