Cloud: Barron's Puts IBM, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard et al on Notice

This weekend’s must-read is Mark Verveka‘s cover story in Barron’s on the next phase of the cloud migration.

Veverka’s story Sky’s the Limit in January was my first exposure to the cloud investing theme and I’ve made an obscene amount of money riding the stocks he introduced me to all year.  In his latest missive on the topic, he looks at the downside of cloud adoption and what investors should watch out for.

Cloud computing for large enterprises has been successful – too successful – and now large enterprises want to take it even further.  By contracting out more and more of their IT operations, these businesses are eliminating their own internal need to buy a lot of the equipment that is baked into next year’s forecasts.

The ramifications for many large cap tech stocks may be huge.

The message of the article is that no one is really ready for this shift to happen quite this quickly, many companies will be caught flatfooted.  Large OEM equipment and IT vendors like Cisco, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM have the most to lose from this premature migration.  Amazon, Microsoft and Google on the other hand look to extend their dominant positions in cloud services.

If you trade or invest in tech stocks, make sure to read this article this weekend.

Source:

A Private Party (Barrons) – sub req