Structure 08 (the Invisible Elephant in the Room)

GigaOM held an interesting, sold out one day meeting on the emerging Cloud. There was only one flaw, or in fact I am completely over the hill and deluded (a possibility). To listen to the discussion here, Microsoft isn't a player (to be fair to the rest, Microsoft does an amazing job NOT talking about their Live plans). It seems to me that this is at first blush a two-horse race -- Google and Microsoft. SaaS isn't a children's crusade. Eventually it takes huge CapEx and OpEx investments to play. It isn't at all clear that even a $1B player like SalesForce has the financial chops to survive against the big players with big resources. Let's say this was an interesting exploration of ideas but without anyone obviously asking the pivotal business questions. Oh to be one of those "other" analysts that doesn't want to be bothered by the business bits...