IIS sees the cloud as the convergence of three worlds: consumers, business and technology. The rise of mobility, social networking and mobile devices has created a new norm for interaction with customers and employees. At the same time, businesses are experiencing speed-to-market and cost containment pressures as never before. Technologies for virtualization, open-source software, automation, bandwidth availability and more continue to evolve.

Lowered costs, enhanced flexibility and the ability to create new revenue streams are making cloud a technology of choice for high performance. But, cloud can do more. Cloud can:

• Connect customers and citizens anytime, anywhere.
• Enhance insight through advanced analytics.
• Eliminate organizational boundaries.
• Spur new products and services.
• Broaden global footprint at lowered cost.

We are seeing benefits in many industries:

• Electronic health records follow patients from doctor to doctor, allowing more coordinated care.
• Applications such as product barcode scanners have brought instantaneous, online comparison shopping to the retail industry.
• Global peer-to-peer lending services allow consumers to sidestep banks with hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions.
• Applications such as Pandora and Genius for iTunes aggregate and analyze user feedback in real time.