Great article! For the benefit of the technical tyros out there, the term “cloud” arose from the technical diagram icon used to denote the Internet, it was a cartoon-ish cloud. People using these diagrams started referring to “the cloud” in meetings and thus the term stuck.

My firm launched the web’s first Database-as-a-Service in 1999, a time when placing software in the cloud, let alone corporate data assets, was virtually unheard of. Fast forward nearly 10 years and the industry we help pioneer is finally gaining the respect it deserves.

Thanks for helping bring the cloud to the masses!

Nice article. You’re particularly right in the second-to-last paragraph about making the applications more connected to each other. That’s one of the most popular requests we get over at Zoho and are surely working to make some of those scenarios you describe available soon.

Thanks for keeping us in mind!

Rodrigo