The March 2009 issue of eContent Magazine features commentary by Newstex President Larry Schwartz in an article called Content in the Cloud (link note: subscription and registration required to view the full article on econtentmag.com).The article by Nancy Davis Kho discusses the growing trend in moving to cloud computing that companies, content providers and content distributors are following.  Cloud computing offers a variety of benefits such as cost savings, flexiblity, real-time scalability, and security. When asked about the cost savings Newstex realizes through cloud computing, Larry Schwartz said, "We have been increasingly working with video on demand for our customers.  It would have cost tens of thousands of dollars for a content delivery network suited to distributing them, but we use Amazon's service for storage -- it's like the electric company for us, just another utility -- and we pay 10 to 15 cents per gigabyte of storage each month." Schwartz provides a simple example of Newstex's cost savings from cloud computing.  Kho writes in her article, "In October 2008, Newstex added 1,500 hours of video to the cloud.  Its storage bill from Amazon for the month was $200."Many large and well-known companies have already shifted some of their business to the cloud and the shift is expected to continue (if not explode) in the coming years.  As Schwartz cites in the eContent Magazine article, "The cloud was built for scale, and there really is no limit.  Some of the largest Web 2.0 applications are run on the cloud -- for instance, Wordpress uses Amazon's S3 for storage."As far as the content industry is concerned, the classic 80/20 rule is expected to do a complete reversal in the coming years, resulting in 80% of business being done in the cloud rather than the current 20%.  Schwartz says, "This is a major industry trend," and states that Newstex will be fully on the cloud within the next two years.Newstex has learned how to leverage cloud computing to offer top quality content at the lowest cost possible.  Believe it or not, the widespread shift to the clouds has just begun.  The next few years should be very exciting, and Newstex is proud to be a forerunner in embracing cloud computing within the content industry.