Is the Cloud Really Just the Return of Mainframe Computing?

In his article Is the Cloud Really Just the Return of Mainframe Computing? in SQL Server Magazine, Michael Otley tries to argue we're headed back to the bad old days of mainframe computing. It's obvious he just doesn't understand the impact of the cloud. It reads like a fearful warning to business that they will lose control, but exactly the opposite is true.

"Businesses moved away from that model of centralized computing on purpose. Businesses, and perhaps more specifically their departments and end users, wanted more control of their computing resources. They didn’t want to share them with other business units—let alone other businesses. This is exactly what the cloud requires that you do. These factors led to the rise of distributed PC computing, client/server computing, and the web that we use today."

On the contrary, this is a continuation of the decentralization begun in the PC Revolution. The role of corporate IT will be radically changed by the cloud. Because cloud can scale from micro instances all the way up to high performance cluster GPU instances and can be almost instantly provisioned, absolutely everyone gets their niche solution and eventually the corporate IT middleman is eliminated. We are now seeing the follow-on to the PC Revolution, something that in the future might be termed the Server Revolution.

P.S. Throw Mobile into the mix and corporate IT is in for some radical reconfiguration.

Your thoughts?