Interesting certainly. I've been looking into the "cloud" recently and I'm interested that there appear to be some very different architectural models emerging, but nobody seems to have mentioned it yet.

I've started to come into contact with NoSQL

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Richard,

I agree we need more info in that space, but I think Steve's point is more directed toward the "private cloud" -- the one you have [near total] control over.

One of the IBM DB's I've got significant familiarity with is a "NoSQL" DB. It was interesting, but as a SQL guy, and a developer that prides himself in being a fairly decent [MS SQL / Oracle] / relational] DBA "on the side", I found even that DB (which is a commercial/high $$ per concurrent connection DB) to be far less reliable than any relational DB I've worked with.

This was/is, however, in the "private cloud" -- in the "public cloud" space, Google is certainly leaps and bounds ahead of most of us, and obviously Amazon is doing something right. I'm sure Microsoft is as well, and I hope to explore that soon, but my current projects limit me to something more in the "private" realm.

D.