I was recently looking at Google's trends & insights tool and noticed something very interesting has happened over the last month or so. For the first time the term "cloud computing" has surpassed "virtualization" in terms of search popularity. What is all the more interesting is it took cloud computing a little over a year and half compared to nearly 5 years for virtualization to see the same level of search volumes. Astounding growth to say the least.

For those unfamiliar with Google Trends, it's a service that analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. Google shows you a graph with the results in a Search Volume Index graph. Below is a comparision of Cloud computing Versus Virtualization.

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When looking at the graph its important to look at the growth curve. A great analogy for this type of growth is found in the investment world. When investors are looking for growth opportunities, it is common to look for what is described as a hockey stick moment. The "hockey stick" describes a highly desirable pattern in a company's sales growth (or in our case search popularity). Initially, sales start off at a low level and grow slowly over time, sketching in the blade of the hockey stick. Then, if all goes well, at some point sales start to increase more rapidly, creating the upward curve that is the stick's neck. And then, if this technology company is really onto something, sales take off and growth becomes almost vertical. That's the handle of the stick.

Looking at cloud computing from the point of view of search trends, we would appear to be at that hockey stick moment and based on the volume of interest I'm seeing for the Enomaly ECP, as well as new CloudCamps around the globe, the market for cloud computing is getting hot, very hot and the graph above does a great job of illustrating the opportunity.

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