The next article in this " Realities of open source cloud computing" series will explore other parts of the life cycle for an application deployed on the cloud.

Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies has cloud computing high on the list among technologies that it predicts may be transformative to the IT industry in the next two to five years.

In a recent report, Forrester Research called for a six - to seven-year cycle of spending on what it calls the new information technology foundations for unified computing.