The Unimaginable Is Fast Becoming a Reality

You probably remember when computers took up entire rooms and were used only by companies that needed to do intense mathematical calculations.

That all changed when Intel unveiled the microprocessor and a geeky college dropout started writing software with his former high school pal.

Thanks to the virtual desktop they developed, the PC quickly replaced the mainframe as the center of corporate computing and began showing up in homes across America.

Before long, companies began building interoffice networks so that their employees could run programs like Microsoft Word and Excel on their PCs and also access programs, files, and printers from a central server.

But this model was far from perfect.

Due to a lack of standards in computing hardware and software, competing products were rarely compatible -- making PC networks far more inefficient than their mainframe predecessors.

In fact, most servers ended up being used as single-purpose machines that ran a single software application or database.

And every time a company needed to add a new application, it was forced to expand its data centers, replace or reprogram old systems, and hire IT technicians to keep everything running.

As a result, global IT spending jumped from under $100 billion a year in the early 1970s to over $1 trillion a year by the turn of the century.

Here's the dirty secret behind this mind-boggling growth -- and the two words that will put an end to the party

IT consulting firm IDC reports that every dollar a company spends on a Microsoft product results in an additional $8 of IT expenses.

And one IT expert admits, "Trillions of dollars that companies have invested into information technology have gone to waste."

Yet, companies have had no choice but to run these obscenely expensive and highly inefficient networks.

But that's all about to change...

And that's precisely why the two words "cloud computing" scare the hell out of Bill Gates.

You see, thanks to the thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable laid during the late 1990s, the speed of computer networks has finally caught up to the speed of the computer processors.

Suddenly computers that were once incompatible and isolated are now linked in a giant network, or "cloud."

As a result, computing is fast becoming a utility in much the same way that electricity did...

"The next sea change is upon us." -- Bill Gates

Think back a few years -- anytime you wanted to type a letter, create a spreadsheet, edit a photo, or play a game, you had to go to the store, buy the software, and install it on your computer.

But nowadays, if you want to look up restaurants on Google... find directions on MapQuest... watch a video on YouTube... or sell furniture on Craigslist... all you need is a computer with an Internet connection.

Although these activities require you to use your PC, none of the content you are accessing or the applications you are running are actually stored on your computer -- instead they're stored at a giant data center somewhere in the "cloud."

And you don't give any of it a second thought... just like you don't think twice about where the electricity is coming from when you plug an appliance into the wall.
But cloud computing isn't going to be just a modern convenience -- it's going to be an enormous industry.

You see, everyone from individuals to multinational corporations can now simply tap into the "cloud" to get all the things they used to have to supply and maintain themselves. This will save some companies millions and make others billions.

"Is cloud computing the next big thing?"

That's the title of an article in PC Magazine.

The answer was an overwhelming yes. And PC Magazine isn't the only one taking note of this sweeping trend...

The Economist claims, "As computing moves online, the sources of power and money will increasingly be enormous 'computing clouds.'"

David Hamilton of the Financial Post says this technology "has the potential to shower billions in revenues on companies that embrace it."

And Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, has even written an entire book on the subject, entitled The Big Switch. In it, he asserts: "The PC age is giving way to a new era: the utility age."

He goes on to make this prediction: "Rendered obsolete, the traditional PC is replaced by a simple terminal -- a 'thin client' that's little more than a monitor hooked up to the Internet."

While that may sound far-fetched, in the corporate market, sales of these "thin clients" have been growing at over 20 percent per year -- far outpacing the sales of PCs.

According to market-research firm IDC, the U.S. is now home to more than 7,000 data centers just like the one constructed on the banks of the Columbia River in 2005.

And the number of servers operating within these massive data centers is expected to grow to nearly 16 million by 2010 -- that's three times as many as a decade ago.

"Data centers have become as vital to the functioning of society as power stations." -- The Economist 

The simple truth is that cloud computing is becoming as big a part of our everyday lives as cell phones or cable television.

And one company is shaping up to be a remarkable way for investors like you to cash in on the fast-moving cloud computing technology.

You may already know what it is... and you may have even guessed that it's the real face behind Design, LLC.

But what you may not realize is that this is still an excellent time to get invested -- despite what many so-called "experts" in the financial media might be telling you...