There was a lot of commentary on the IBM announcement that it would be offering popular (well, enterprise-popular) server applications via Amazon Web Services (AWS), but I think the rest of us pundits have to doff our hats to Dana Gardner's analysis. Gardner looks deeper and with more historical perspective than anyone, and predicts that the deal has the ultimate effect of forcing Microsoft to accelerate its own cloud service (Azure), allowing IBM to extend to other cloud providers, giving AWS a huge boost, and ultimately allow Oracle to prevail from its position on the sidelines.

I don't agree with his conclusion (as I've said, I think the fence-sitting plays are losing bets in this sort of transition) but the course he charts to get there takes us through territory that no one else bothered to explore yesterday. The effects on Microsoft, in combination with their existing pre-occupation with Google as a threat, probably should not be discounted. If they do pick up the pace on Azure, I expect it to have a lot of trouble (for reasons detailed yesterday... briefly, I don't think their development culture is up to the task right now) that spin won't fix; if they don't, they are going to be even later to the party than they had already planned, and they might actually lose some of the die-hard customers who otherwise might have stayed neutral on the whole cloud thing until Redmond told them which way to jump.

After taking Gardner's reading into account, I'm thinking that I wasn't bullish enough on the effects of the deal for either Amazon or IBM in yesterday's post. It's a better move for both than I gave them credit for. For CIOs, though, I'm not sure it means much unless you are already in bed with IBM. The synergies if you are could be impressive; if not, I think most of you are probably going to look at less stodgy, less expensive solutions.