Can cloud computing be a trading commodity?

While many blame traders in the world's financial hubs for our current financial malaise and the Dot Com bust of the late 90s, the same people are eying up the opportunity to buy and sell cloud computing capacity as a new commodity, says Camille Mendler, Vice President at the analyst firm Yankee Group. The opportunity seems logical for unused capacity at large cloud computing providers to be sold in an open, free market to the highest bidder. At this stage it seems there isn’t a central system or exchange for the commodity. But already Amazon sells spare capacity on its systems, it works on a private bidding system somewhat like electricity is traded.

Mendler also explained that opportunities may exist for this market to become more complex with options for different quality grades, carbon zero rated, high security or other different types.

Only one in five large enterprises in North America, Europe and Asia are using cloud services at present. Surely with the huge growth in this area, more non-peak and unused capacity will be coming to the market.

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