Cloud computing : Its not just about the infrastructure

So what is the value of Cloud Computing to me(someone who is not an infrastructure guy) ?

The important shift in my opinion is the change that will take place in the programming model for Enterprise Apps as a result of this new paradigm. The SDLC is going through a major change from Develop - Test - Deploy - Release as time/people sliced functions to Develop-Test-Deploy-Beta-develop-test-deploy-Beta2 to functions within the scope of developer responsiblities.

Imagine having your dev/test/prod environments in the cloud all driven through eclipse/netbeans and the movement between the environment's driven through course gained services like AWS webservices API that interact with your hardware to provision the application.

Imagine a library of widgets/services that will make into the Enterprise just has open source made its way in.It is really the re-birth of the Component Based Software taken to the next level.

Imagine treating things like -webscale computing , massive parallel processing- hadoop , specialized analytic capabilities , etc as commodities that can be purchased at any point of time for an application.

Imagine having a large number of small software vendors that thrive on delivering small specialized services/widgets to whom infrastructure is an operating expense and not a capital expenditure.

The above to me is the big switch. Besides the aspects of driving efficiency in infrastructure as a result of scale , the could computing paradigm will enable the building of a large number of software services players that will ultimately compete with the Application development department in the Enterprise.

Note: the link to Eric Schmidt's Bear sterns conference as an interesting observation of -"there will be small number of big players and a large numbers of small players in the cloud computing space"