Dion Hinchcliffe recently pointed out in his post "Eight Ways Cloud Computing Will Effect Your Business" that we are in a delicate balance between risk and benefit when it comes to cloud computing. There is no doubt that interest in Cloud Computing has risen dramatically in the last year as shown in the Google Trends graph above. With cloud interoperability advancing and more dependable services becoming available, enterprise computing architectures are evolving to take advantage of the improved scale and cost Cloud Computing promises.
The trend to Cloud Computing represents a real opportunity for Enterprise RIA technologies to be the "User Interface" into the cloud based services. With the emergence of the "RIA Fit Client" that installs web-based applications on the desktop and allows off-line operation it is possible to see an "RIA - Cloud Computing" model is a viable alternative to the more expensive client-server. Indeed in our customer engagements we are seeing client-server applications (mostly VB) convert to RIA to get the benefits of web delivery without sacrificing the quality of user experience.
I was surprised to learn in a recent strategy session with Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester that 47% of new development is still client-server. Those efforts should seriously consider an RIA based approach. Today's Enterprise RIA platforms, like Curl meet all the requirements of communicating efficiently and securely with data services in the cloud or the enterprise and should be considered a viable alternative to client-server.