Lizelle Christison is the manager for the upcoming IP EXPO.

Any business that isn’t sold on the value proposition that cloud computing offers, need only look to Silicon Valley to see what a pivotal role this technology is playing in the industry.

The biggest technology firms in the world, namely Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, are drawing battle lines in the cloud, as they shore up the defences of their ecosystems, and ensure their cloud-based services and content plays secure them control of your data and increased market share.

The current frontline is cloud-based music, with Amazon’s cloud music service, Cloud Player, leading the pack with its unlimited music storage for MP3s bought through Amazon, and a Web app for iPad. Apple’s recently launched iCloud service enables users to store up to 25 000 songs from external sources, and unlimited iTunes purchases through its Match feature, in the cloud. Google’s Music Beta service currently offers storage for up to 20 000 songs.

The other area where these heavyweights are competing is in the cloud e-book and movie content space. Facebook, and by association Microsoft, by virtue of its shareholding in the social network, has already made a major play in the provisioning of pay-per-view movie and TV content on that platform, while Amazon and Google are going head-to-head in the e-book segment. Google also announced a few new storage and App Engine offerings and features on its Google Cloud SQL and Cloud Storage services, which will help it compete with Amazon’s Web Services.

And Amazon’s move into the tablet market, with the recent launch of the Kindle Fire, is a definite counter-strike against Apple, in an effort to take back control of the entire cloud-based ecosystem, from the device, online retail store purchases and content storage, right up to your credit card details and personal information – all of which is stored and accessed via the cloud.

This all points to a shift in the way end-users consume technology. And, with the evolving hardware paradigm, with smaller, cheaper, more mobile form-factor devices becoming the norm, if your company is not investigating what cloud computing can do for its business, then expect to get left behind in a cloud of your competitor’s dust.