There’s no question: web mashups are integral part of Web 2.0. Besides the social aspect of Web 2.0, mashups have been more and more prevalent in the Web 2.0 world. It is hard to imagine a Web 2.0 app not having content from other sources: a map from Google, pictures from Flicker, avatars from Gravatar,  or movies from YouTube. Many web providers now exposed proprietary content through API’s. ProgrammableWeb has the most comprehensive list of Web 2.0 API’s I could find. The list is growing every day. Instead of opening their content to outside world, many websites opened their doors and let other developers deploy applications on their sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce and many others, all providing proprietary platforms. The users can then combine applications from various vendors and use them.

On March 14th 2006, Amazon started the Cloud Race with the release of Amazon Web Services Platform. At the end of 2006, Microsoft realizes that the Cloud is the new big thing as they start development of their own version of cloud offerings and release after two years a comprehensive suite of tools and services (Windows Azure) which makes Microsoft one of the main players in the field. Other players are trying to catch up: VMWare, EMC, Google, HP, etc.

So what’s the future of the Cloud? How it will change our lives? Continue reading…