Top 50 Cloud Computing Companies in 2008.

It seems that the clouds are getting thicker every day, but the forecast is just fine! Yesterday, Jeremy Geelan, Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events, put out a list of the Top 50 Cloud Computing Companies in 2008. Among the giants on the list are Yahoo!, Google, At&T and, of particular interest to the Ruby community, EngineYard.

Now I know that wrapping your head around the concept of Cloud Computing can be difficult, let alone trying to figure out whether or not this buzzed-about model actually is the future of technology. You're not alone there. Like so many talked-about, hyped "buzzword-worthy" ideas, it may be that the phrase is more familiar than the concept. Wikipedia's entry on Cloud Computing does a very nice job of defining the characteristics and architecture if you know the phrase but are afraid to admit you have no idea what it means.

To go back to EngineYard, however, this company has elevated Ruby to the cloud-sphere. Unlike many other companies, which provide support for and deployment of applications on a number of platforms, EngineYard is Ruby on Rails all the way and, thus, have become a leader in the RoR community. They may be getting a run for their money soon. FiveRuns, in fact.

FiveRuns and MorphLabs are teaming up to boost Ruby's atmospheric presence. They've put out FiveRuns TuneUp, a Rails plug-in that provides metric analysis for programs in development. It not only gives developers a quick look at trouble spots, but also provides for community feedback on those trouble spots, if feedback is wanted. It's an interesting venture, both in terms of putting Ruby higher in the clouds and in terms of looking at the oft-talked about problem of scalability of RoR applications. Who knows? Maybe next year's Top 50 will include more Ruby-oriented companies.