Amazon's Web Services, which pipe applications, processing and storage over the Internet, may eventually let companies escape the confines of their data centers and pay for cheap, scalable processing and storage as easily as they pay for water or electricity.

FORBES: Bridging The Clouds

Sun's announcement marks the information technology industry's latest step toward "utility computing, " a grid system in which companies pipe in data processing and storage from faraway server farms, says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, a book on utility computing published earlier this week.

FORBES: Sun Plans To Close Its Data Centers

Amazon's (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) Web Services, which pipe applications, processing and storage over the Internet, may eventually let companies escape the confines of their data centers and pay for cheap, scalable processing and storage as easily as they pay for water or electricity.

FORBES: Bridging The Clouds