If we had the ability to redesign the placemats in Chinese Restaurants (yes, the one with the Year of the Rat and the Year of the Dog) - we would call 2010 the Year of the Cloud.

Cloud Computing & SaaS (often used interchangeably by many) were everywhere. The Year of the Cloud was driven by Business adoption. Everything from Email, to Accounting, to CRM, Payroll, Storage, Project Management, EMR/PHR moved increasingly to the Cloud. When businesses were not buying SaaS solutions to integrate into their say, Employee Benefits systems - they were busy building SaaS applications for their clients. Microsoft moved Office online, while Google launched Chrome as an OS. Oracle moved more stuff online, while Salesforce continued to stregthen.

Clearly the trend seems to be in the direction of moving all our work to the Cloud - in what - the next 5, 10 years ? maybe ? At that point - the PC & Mac platforms basically become delivery systems for the same Cloud. Kind of like driving a Focus or a BMW - but basically a car.

In the spirit of the Year of the Cloud, its time to share a GigaOM & Column Five Media infographic from June 2010.

Enjoy and See you in 2011.

UPDATE : One day after this post. IDG named Cloud Computing as "Christmas Present" (present as against past). Here is a link to their whitepaper