Amazon.com officially entered this market in March 2006 when it launched its Simple Storage Service (S3) and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary, which today provides a suite of Internet-based IT infrastructure services.

"We're trying to provide an end-to-end suite of services that together form a platform for outsourced IT infrastructure," said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for AWS. "We want our customers to be able to run their IT infrastructure in our cloud. Whatever that means to them is what it will end up meaning to us."

So far, AWS services have been mostly targeted at and consequently embraced by startup companies and small development teams seeking inexpensive and flexible computing resources for Web applications. However, AWS has its sights set on large companies and their key technology decision makers: CIOs, CTOs and IT managers.

"Realistically, today AWS is more targeted at startups, but its ambition is to target the enterprise," said Lydia Leong, a Gartner analyst.