As noted above, in the bad old days software vendors used to charge-a lot-for developer copies. And when it came time to put an application into production, the price tags got even bigger.

Open source wasn't just cheaper. It was free. The outcome was predictable. The use of open source exploded as people embraced less expensive ways to develop applications-this in the face of aggressive and unrelenting denigration by established vendors and many senior IT executives. Even though established authority figures criticized open source, developers flocked to it, with the end result that it spread throughout IT applications and infrastructures.

The same phenomenon is happening with cloud computing-and in the face of the same denigration and FUD. Despite many, many examples of cloud-based applications costing far less than traditional hosting models, I have heard IT professionals confidently state that their organization can deliver services more cheaply than cloud providers. This usually takes the form of comparing the cost of a piece of on-premise hardware to the same capacity obtained from a cloud provider and concluding that internal IT can deliver with less cost.

Tellingly, when they are asked about what the loaded cost of associated services like ongoing system administration, not to mention IT support personnel such as HR and finance, one usually discovers that they have no idea what those costs are or how much should be applied to the on-premise option to enable a fully-loaded cost comparison.

One can predict that cloud computing will witness the same explosion of use as its lower costs start to be internalized in project budgeting assumptions and projects that couldn't have been justified in the past become economically viable as .