The Future of the Cloud highlights cloud computing's impact on IT organizations, and explores both its disruptive nature and the new markets and opportunities it's creating. The first phase of the cloud was about developing the foundation for the services it provides. Now that the fundamentals are in place, companies are using them to become an essential part of the cloud's value chain.

The report covers the impact of the transition on IT organizations in areas such as security, data, the new fundamentals of service provision, network architecture and the need to make the cloud part of a long-term systems and technology strategic plan.

It also features:

• Emerging leaders in the cloud computing space.
• How an always-on, always-available infrastructure supports applications that cut expenses and generate revenues.
• Open APIs and how they drive the marketplace of the cloud economy.
• Common rules and practices emerging in data portability, privacy and security.
• The impact of real-time decisions on the enterprise data tier.
• How cloud infrastructures will live alongside and leverage the social graph.
• Different models for cloud computing and the open-data ecosystem.
• Leveraging the expertise and research and development capabilities of VMWare and Intel.

We think you'll find The Future of the Cloud (embedded below) to be essential reading for the new technology enterprise. And remember, you always you can find our day-to-day coverage of cloud computing at ReadWriteCloud.