The end of corporate computing (10th anniversary edition)

Last week, in its quarterly earnings report, Amazon.com revealed for the first time how much money its cloud computing operation, Amazon Web Services, takes in. The numbers were impressive. AWS has becomean $8 billion business, and its revenues continue to growswiftly, nearly doubling in the most recentquarter fromthe same period last year. The unit’s profit margin — a surprisingly robust 21 percent — is vastlywider than that of the company’s retailing operation. Indeed, without AWS, Amazon...