Management consultants McKinsey & Company released a report on the economics of cloud computing, speculating that many companies may end up spending more on cloud-based services than on maintaining their own data centers. McKinsey calculates that the CPU per month TCO for a cloud architecture for a cloud-based infrastructure service may be 144% more than that of a typical data center. McKinsey advises IT executives to focus on more approaches that enhance data center efficiency, such as "aggressive virtualization."

To stay on top of all the trends, subscribe to Database Trends and Applications magazine