Amazon Takes On IBM, Oracle, and HP

Amazon is far from alone in the market. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems (JAVA) have long offered cloud-like services. And on Apr. 7, Google (GOOG) took the first step toward opening its infrastructure to others. The company's App­Engine will let software developers create new programs and run them on Google's computers. The price will be tough for any rival to match: free. "Lots of developers say they spend 20% of their time [taking care of their computers]," says product manager Tom Stocky. "It's a problem we've addressed inside Google, so we figured we might as well offer it up to the world." Google is one of the favorites to become a powerhouse in cloud computing because it already runs some of the largest, most sophisticated data centers. Business Week