Specifically, the meta operating system is "a virtualization layer between applications and distributed computing resources ... that utilizes distributed computing resources to perform scheduling, loading, initiating, supervising applications and error handling."

But the meta operating system only provides the muscles of a distributed environment, Bittman says. Another layer, which Gartner calls a service governor, will have to provide the brains, making decisions about where to allocate computing resources.

Say you have five business units and 100 applications -- some need ultra-fast performance and others don't. The service governor will decide which application gets what.

The technology "is evolving," Bittman says."This is not something that is just going to turn on."

Private clouds will take shape over the next few years, but perhaps only in large enterprises."Over time, a small business will not have economies of scale to make it worth staying in the IT business," Bittman says. Within five years, a huge percentage of small businesses will get most of their computing resources from external cloud providers, he predicts.