We just published a new report entitled "The Evolution Of Cloud Computing Markets". It recaps many of the cloud computing market observations from the last two years and categorizes the business models in a consistent taxonomy. Basically all current offerings from pure Infrastructure as a Service, in the upper left, via virtualization tools up to SaaS applications can be categorized by this. We explain the key characteristics of each business model and give vendors guidance to position and communicate their cloud service.

Beyond the preview on this blog, the full document predicts the future market momentum around:

• Future cloud style services including human resources. Some portion of the current BPO market might transform into dynamic BPO services or even Business Process as a Service (BPaaS).
• Fundamental shifts in the spending behavior of enterprise customers.
• Future cloud computing business models such as the Cloud Broker.

The "The Evolution Of Cloud Computing Markets" report is a significantly important report explaining Forrester's take on Cloud Computing strategy. It will be followed by a sizing and forecasting of each of the 12 cloud computing market segments, a detailed description of the Cloud Broker business model and more documents around collaborative clouds. We gave a preview to Forrester clients already at the recent IT Forum event in Lisbon.

We hope this sneak preview puts the full report on your "MUST READ" list for this week.

Stefan Ried

with the co-authors Holger Kisker and Pascal Matzke