Apple Computer is enjoying a comeback, in part because it saves its customers time from the growing complexity of Windows computing.

FORBES: Digital rules

Pre-integrating the elements required to achieve efficient computing reduces complexity and increases the likelihood of wide adoption.

FORBES: How Cloud Computing Can Boost Developing Nations

Through declarative programming, Puppet allows the complexity inherent in the modern computing environments to be tamed and automated.

FORBES: Why Adopting the Declarative Programming Practices Will Improve Your Return from Technology

With big players like Amazon and Google in the Cloud Service Provision business, and organizations as diverse as Reddit and the City of Los Angeles using those services, cloud computing promises huge savings in cost and complexity.

FORBES: Are Cloud Data Security Fears Overblown? A Sensible View.

Consumerization, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, mobility are all increasing the complexity of the job of managing IT by orders of magnitude.

FORBES: The Coming Crisis of IT Management

To put this complexity in perspective, Edmund Teller once estimated that the costs of building the data and computing infrastructure needed to extend weather forecasting abilities by about two weeks ran well into the trillions of dollars.

FORBES: Why Most Forbes Readers Know More About Global Warming than Most Climate Scientists

Challenges to be overcome include security issues, the complexity of managing multiple distributed systems, and the mistrust that may exist between companies sharing each other's computing resources, Barrett said.

CNN: Intel demos Pentium 4 at 2GHz