There is one very significant, very often overlooked, difference between today’s cloud services market and yesterday’s PC software market: Software depended on a sales channel, comprised of independent organizations that ensured the availability of software packages through resellers. With the modern cloud, the service provider is the channel provider. The applications and infrastructure you or your enterprise uses are cultivated, deployed, and delivered by the same organization. So perhaps it is no wonder that Google — the dominant web search provider for most of this century — is among the world’s top three cloud service providers.