Meanwhile in the real world....
I work for a large storage vendor, so this is an interesting topic to me. Some of the other comments echo my thoughts, but having been in IT for a very long time (I remember the birth of the internet) and more recently specialising in storage, I am not sure that world + dog will willingly host their data in the clouds you describe.
Thoughts I have are:
- That performance of access to the data in the clouds you mention, will never meet the demands of large databases engines. Unless of course, we all get as much bandwidth as we want - to anything - cheaply or free. Utopia I suspect. Can't see it whilst telecomms companies can make money from it.
- Businesses serious about their data will not look to put it in someone else's domain. Much is propriety and lodging your crown jewels elsewhere is a tough act to justify. Factor in the auditing requirements and it looks tough responding to a Sarbanes-Oxley based investigation, only to be able to offer "Err, Amazon has the data - honest! - we just can't get it out of them very quickly".
- I think that business or private clouds will certainly prevail, although they could be run by partners/SIs. The point is that it keeps the data 'in house'.
- Innovation. The capabilities these Cloud offerings use came from the storage vendors who collectively throw a lot of money looking for better ways of handling the huge volumes of data, securely and at the best price point. I have personally seen the "use the cheapest simple kit" approach in action - it is a nightmare to manage, which increases risk and ultimately cost. Keeping your data in kit you own/lease is a much safer bet - even looking out so very far ahead.