By contrast, smaller firms like Enki are betting their livelihoods on the emerging opportunity--and, in some cases, outperforming their Goliath competitors.

FORBES: Tiny Firms Offer Big Computing Services

Enki's revenue, as a result, has doubled every six months, Durkee says.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Today, Enki has fewer than ten employees and about eighty servers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

But the company now powers the IT operations of about twenty customers, some much bigger, which pay Enki monthly fees to store and process their data.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In August 2006, Durkee mortgaged his home, and he and a partner invested their retirement funds to start Enki, a tiny firm in Mountain View, Calif.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Enki may not be able to leverage millions of servers like big companies including Sun Microsystems, Amazon, or IBM, which are also offering utility, or "cloud, " computing services.

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Other players, like Layered Technologies and Enki, which use 3Tera's Applogic software to serve up their computing and storage to customers, will also become part of the standard by default.

FORBES: Bridging The Clouds

But he's confident that by the time larger customers start to look at utility computing as an attractive option, a company like Enki or Joyent may have grown into a real competitor.

FORBES: Tiny Firms Offer Big Computing Services