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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Cloud computing did as much as any other technology, idea or product to define web hosting in 2009. It was a constant subject of conversation in the industry - a major topic at just about every hosting event this year, regularly addressed in new product announcements and press releases and was the buzzword service that customers sought out and hosting companies worked to align their products with.

It would be next to impossible to even summarize everything that took place under the cloud computing banner this year, but, in reviewing the cloud's effect on the hosting landscape in 2009, I'll certainly try to hit most of the high points.

Let's start close to the year's chronological end, in late November, as Microsoft officially introduced the long-discussed Windows Azure cloud platform at its Professional Developer's Conference. Still in its "community technology preview" stage, the Microsoft cloud services platform will enter a production environment on January 1, 2010. 

Azure's launch rounds out a "platform as a service" cloud computing market that includes, among quite a few other products, Google's App Engine, Salesforce.com's Force.com platform and Rackspace's Cloud Sites offering.

Cloud Sites was one of the PaaS services that emerged in the course of the year, along with the evolution of the rest of Rackspace's cloud products, along with the Mosso brand, into what is now known as The Rackspace Cloud, a division whose products include the company's Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers and Cloud Files products.

At about the time Rackspace was positioning The Rackspace Cloud as the umbrella under which its cloud products would operate, it appointed long-time chief strategy officer Lew Moorman president of the division.

While Rackspace's moves were certainly interesting for the company's efforts to gain position against such enormous organizations as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, it is also quite notable for being sort of emblematic of another significant and growing facet of cloud computing, the "hybrid" cloud offerings being put forth by hosting providers who deal with a significantly smaller volume, and significantly larger scale, of hosting customers.

Rackspace was one such company, though it is a decidedly more consumer-oriented operator than some of the hosting companies that added cloud hosting products designed to compliment larger-scale enterprise installations.

In June, Carpathia hosting announced that it had launched its "AlwaysOn/InstantOn" service, which it described as both a "fully managed enterprise cloud hosting" solution, and as a "hybrid" cloud hosting solution. Carpathia's efforts focused on cloud computing as a natural compliment to dedicated or managed hosting environments.

At about the same time, hosting provider Hosted Solutions introduced what it called a "trusted cloud." In its use of yet another new term, the company was here trying to distinguish its product as being particularly well suited to a production environment. 

In May, hosting provider SoftLayer announced a range of cloud hosting services it called CloudLayer, beginning with a cloud storage solution and a cloud-optimized content delivery network for the distribution of those stored files.

There are dozens of other examples of hosting providers doing cool things with the cloud (an exhaustive review would be too much of a stretch), and many other somewhat dubious examples of companies putting the cloud badge on whatever they could. Certainly, there is still a discussion taking place over what exactly ought to be considered "cloud computing."

Nevertheless, cloud computing gained plenty of steam this year, both as an ideology and as a product set, particularly as products gathered around the handful of business models that emerges as really viable ways of providing hosting services.

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