CenterBeam, Inc.

After consistent cuts from its budget and watching nearby Los Angeles save more than $5 million after moving to cloud computing, San Jose, California is considering making a similar move that it hopes would offset the effects of the city's overall economic woes, according to Information Week.

The New York Times recently reported that Amazon chief executive officer Jeffrey P. Bezos believes that cloud computing will generate as much revenue in the future as its ecommerce sales do. Citibank estimates that Amazon will generate roughly $600 million in revenue from its cloud computing operation this yearwhich represents fewer than 3 percent of its overall revenue.

Investors knew that cloud computing was a good choice for investment when 2010 began, but the difficult decision for even the best analyst was which company was the best value. According to Fool.com, cloud computing became so popular on Wall Street at the beginning of the year that finding value was especially difficult.

Google recently announced the development of an applications marketplace that allows cloud computing companies to easily purchase and integrate features into their business seamlessly. The site acts a medium between cloud computing application developers and companies hoping to increase their capabilities.

The increased useof smartphones and laptops in the enterprise sector has led Gartner, an IT market research firm, to predict that PC shipments will grow by 20 percent in 2010. Moreover, spending is likely to increase by 12.2 percent to about $245 billion.

Small- and medium-sized businesses are turning to cloud computing at a faster rate than ever in hopes of reducing costs by outsourcing IT to a SaaS provider, according to Outsourcery.

Companies who sell cloud computing services must be aware of their commitment to their customers and carefully package features, according to ZDNet. Also, determining a pricing option based on the package offered to a customer is crucial.

For small health clinics and private medical practices looking to collect money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an IT expert believes that shifting to cloud computing in the form of SaaS is imperative when the government begins awarding the funds in 2011.

Despite reports that businesses of all sizes are still reducing IT costs, Microsoft reported on Wednesday that sales for Windows 7 have risen to 90 million licenses sold worldwide. Increased sales have also led to further demand from retailers.

By 2014, more than 130 million enterprise users will utilize applications in the mobile cloud, according to Juniper Research. Companies like Google and Microsoft have recognized the trend of cloud expansion and began offering Platform-as-a-Aervice applications.