Everyone who carefully monitors the mass media landscape in regard to cloud computing may observe a certain contradiction among industry analysts and opinion leaders. In some cases, different research teams within the same organization contradict each other.
In the U.S., optimistic scenarios forecasting a very-soon-to-happen mass conversion to SaaS-based business applications dominate. There is a noticeable background of neutral voices cooling down the euphoria. And sometimes you can hit on a conservative judgment challenging the market predictions with well-grounded observations of the real world. The funny thing is that in Europe things are turned inside out.
Confusing Signals
Gartner consistently trumpets SaaS market growth, forecasting revenues to reach $9bn in 2010,...
Socially-enabled intranets deliver obvious advantages to a wide range of verticals within an organization. The latest Intranet 2.0 Global Survey from Prescient Digital Media reveals the key business drivers behind Enterprise 2.0 initiatives: knowledge management, employee collaboration, team sites, employee engagement and executive communications. The 2.0 Adoption Council adds some business benefit flavor to this discussion, stating that with intranets organizations are primarily looking for increasing productivity (23%), better employee communication (22%) and corporate culture (16%). 
I spent last week on a business trip to several European countries meeting partners, customers and the press, all of which gave me an extremely valuable feedback from the market. It even made me think that in some cases, vendors of intranet solutions are a long way away from real life.