Like I said last time, cloud computing and generally cloud architecture is a future in my, and not only my opinion. On last RailsConf 2008 Ezra Zygmuntowicz gave his talk about Vertebra - next generation Cloud Computing Platform built with Erlang/Ruby and centered around Ejabberd and XMPP. Very cool stuff, here is a PDF of the slides from presentation: Vertebra.pdf. Theory -  “Vertebra can be used for automating the cloud as well as for distributed real time application development. The whole idea of Vertebra is to democratize the cloud, abstracting the cloud interface API’s and allowing folks to utilize multiple cloud providers based on a number of cost/benefit factors. It also has large potential for enterprise integration projects.” What is more Ezra said that he’s got approval to release all of Vertebra as open source with a GPL license, of course they will also offer paid support for it as well as hosted Jabber/Erlang infrastructure as a service. So generally great news to someone wants to start with cloud architecture