A few years ago VMware started with their great technology, virtualisation for Servers. And you all know where that has been leading us to. It was very clear virtualisation was the way to go. Bottom-line: VMware was growing rapidly and a lot of third party developers and other vendors were trying to grow as well with this hype and put the name -v-, -virtual- and -virtualisation- in the original product name. And just because of the hype, the virtualisation word itself made the product more special and allowed it to sell better.

Now, since the word Virtualisation is used almost everywhere, people tend to feel it’s not so special anymore and the marketing department is looking for a new word.

- CLOUD -

Wow, what a fresh, cool word this is. During the keynote of Maritz he repeated the word 35 times (link, link). So VMware is into the total cloud concept. But others are following: Microsoft will soon release Windows Cloud OS and Citrix Cloud Center .

And the nice thing about all this: they are all different things, but yet, they are all nothing new…

I predict that 2009 will be a year where you’ll see the cloud word more and more. But unfortunately (or should I say fortunately), people are still sensitive for Word hypes. We’ll see where that leads us to and I've decided to call myself a Cloud Specialist! Wink