What to Consider When Thinking About Moving to the Cloud – NYTimes.com

What to Consider When Thinking About Moving to the Cloud – NYTimes.com.

Cloud computing has been a rage for several years now. Companies like Salesforce.com (CRM), NetSuite (N), and VMWare (VMW) which offer cloud-based business services have been riding wave nicely for at least three years. Other companies like F5 Networks (FFIV), Fortinet (FTNT), Rackable (RAX) who provide infra-structure for the cloud computing also benefited greatly. However, there are signs that the nice perhaps is becoming mature. VMWare recently beat the forecasts but offered a less-than-exciting guidance for the year. (see VMWare’s weak outlook prompts price target cuts | Reuters.) F5 Networks gave similar warnings earlier this year. That warming send shares of F5 tumbling. While nothing of sort has happened to VMWare, analysts have started to cut the price targets. Of course, there are those like Goldman Sachs who believe this is time to accumulate shares. What ever you may believe about valuations of these companies, there’s no doubt they have changed computing services forever.