Cloud boom or cloud bubble?

An Evans Data survey saying 40% of application developers want to sell their stuff from the clouds, and the resulting backlash against clouds, leads to the obvious question.

Are we about to face a cloud boom or a cloud bubble?

The answer, in my view, is it's a little of both.

There is something inherently frothy about every new technology. I can't remember one, in all my 25 years covering this business, that did not begin with unbridled enthusiasm, followed by tears, but then followed by real progress.

This was true for the PC, for LANs, for multimedia, the Internet, even open source. Each new trend is an open door, to which everyone rushes. But not everyone gets through.

Clouds are going to be that way. Some applications will adopt well to SaaS -- some already have. Others won't and in a few years we'll wonder why we thought they would.

This is just the way of the technology world. Clouds will bring business model success to some open source companies, while for others it will lead only to grief. This does not make the cloud vision false.

Just, for those of us looking forward, a bit cloudy.[poll id=99]