In November 2008, Microsoft made its announcement that it would begin selling a web-based version of Sharepoint in 2010. With Google apps already making serious inroads into the SMB and Enterprise market, one has to wonder whether it's too little, too late. Being late to the dance does not even take into account that the web version will be inferior to its client server version. By business model necessity, this has to be so because of Microsoft will not allow its 100,000 plus licenses fall to the wayside.

As more and more services are moving to the cloud, especially with players like Microsoft (see Microsoft Azure) and Google (see Google Health) making their Goliathic rise to the cumulus space, the dark overcast of government regulations is also beginning to hover like the summer fog over the Sunset district of San Francisco.

(Side note: the unfortunate side effect of blogs is that it provides a liberal forum for writing hacks like me; sorry for the 2nd grade poetry; and now I need to apologize to 2nd graders)

Cloud services providers have three choices: