Perhaps I'm biased but I feel lucky to be riding the biggest technology wave of recent times. Cloud computing, whether people understand it or not, is revolutionizing how businesses and consumers are managing themselves (including their information, communications, and daily operations). Cloud computing is a different way to get the same thing done and it seems to make sense for nearly all of us. Combining cloud with developments in mobile devices, and app-stores for everything, and there isn't much that's out of the realm of possibility.

The technology itself is now taking a second seat to the delivery model. Technology? Yeah, we got that. We've all got that. You want a competitive advantage? Think deployment. Think delivery. Procurement. Consumption. Now businesses only need to consider "how" their customers want whatever it is they want. The technology is becoming commoditized. Technology is just a pile of ingredients that can be found in a store. The wining vendors will be the ones who understand that a pile of cold cuts, cheese, and mayonnaise are much more desirable served on a plate between two pieces of bread.

And that brings me to all the groundbreaking things that are being announced at CA World 2011. Because CA Technologies is not a hardware company, not an infrastructure or hosting provider, and isn't a single-hypervisor virtualization company (it's a management software company if you are still wondering), it is ideally positioned to rise above the nuts-and-bolts technology layer, away from the shackles of compatibility issues and vendor lock-in, and deliver new and better ways to get IT done... f-a-s-t-e-r. That would also explain the top level message for the show:  "IT at the Speed of Business."

So how does that happen?

Well... come to the Cloud Commons® Ecosystem - where service providers, software vendors, developers,  and enterprises can learn best practices and approaches for adopting cloud, speed the development of software projects that use cloud, and simplify the process of buying, selling, and hosting cloud solutions. Specifically, the Cloud Commons site combines a knowledge-based interactive community, cloud development tools, cloud test grid, and an online marketplace for cloud solutions.

But what's truly unique about this? Developers build cloud-ready IT services with the CA AppLogic cloud platform using free test grids in the new Cloud Commons Developer Studio... and the new Cloud Commons Marketplace is ideal for service providers, software vendors and enterprises looking to research, buy and sell cloud solutions. We just announced these new features of the site yesterday from CA World. You can read the news here or view this YouTube video to learn more:

Some of the top features are:

• Developers and software vendors can build, test and, post cloud solutions to the Marketplace.
• Service providers can buy cloud software to add their service portfolios, and host services for enterprise customers that require an external provider.
• Enterprise customers may buy cloud services to use directly on a private cloud, or choose to have a Cloud Commons service provider host them.

This Marketplace uniquely unites enterprises that need cloud services, with developers and vendors who create cloud services, with service providers who host cloud services. And that is what gets IT done at the speed of business.

I hope you take a couple of minutes to register for the Cloud Commons ecosystem - it is free and easy - and explore the many new features we rolled out this week. We're excited to see this ecosystem grow for our partners, customers and other third party software vendors.