So much of this long protracted struggle for political change has rubbed off on the tech community. In the partisan windup to this long election process, we've become almost inured to the fact that as much as things will continue to be the same, already the "choice" between the two candidates has produced one sure thing. That is, either of the two candidates represents fundamental change from the status quo, no matter how much you want to differentiate further. So it is with the shift to the Cloud. Whether you're betting on Google, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or less obviously Apple, IBM, Oracle, or Cisco, the sure thing is that Web services has gone main stream. If this is a horse race at the vendor level, it's about each company's ability to harness its innate strengths and migrate its weaknesses. Put another way, the battle is within, not between.