As the fallout from the economy takes its toll: staff layoffs, reduced capital expenditures, dwindling revenue, etc., enterprises of all sizes are looking for opportunities to trim back on their fixed costs and move toward business models that are more agile, scaling up AND down with demand.  Call it Cloud Computing, call it Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), call it service orientation, or just call it good business.

A couple of days ago, Fortune magazine observed this trend in their Tech Daily post: "Goodbye hardware. Hello, services"

The core of the article can be found in a quotation and subsequent summary statement from the  article's author:

"As Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said back in November: In this economy, ‘customers are not going to bring out their checkbooks for the cost and risk and complexity of big database purchases, or application server purchases, or data center purchases.' They're buying more services, and fewer servers."

The article cites such data points as declining earnings for PC and server manufacturers, strong growth in the services and SaaS arena, and a huge jump in IT outsourcing initiatives (a key business driver for Cloud Computing, as I described previously: Real Value in the Clouds).

That's two Fortune articles this week on Cloud.  Good work mainstream media!