Cloud computing is creating the new Wall Street boom, according to NIA. The only industry that is as bright as cloud computing on Wall Street is social networking, NIA said in a recent report.

2012 will be known as the year cloud computing became widely adopted worldwide. Cloud computing is expected to create 14 million new jobs globally by 2015. In the consumer space, Gartner predicts cloud services will be on 90 percent of personal consumer devices by 2015 so consumers can store, connect, stream and synchronize content across multiple platforms at different locations. That's a lot of tunes and apps.

So far this year, there have been three IPOs of cloud computing stocks, and all three IPOs have been major successes, indicating cloud computing is ready for primetime on Wall Street. And where the money goes, jobs follow.

Next Big Thing: Big Data and the Cloud
Cloud computing and big data analytics are terms that are being linked together with growing frequency.

Big data is the latest trend in high-performance computing. Big data is large scale, often unstructured and is almost always valuable for enterprises looking to make sense out of huge datasets, according to Computer Technology Review. Add cloud computing, which has been all the rage in the tech world for the last few years as it unveils a new era of computing as a service, and things get interesting.

The scale of big data can make it a favorable partner for the cloud. With that scale comes a high complexity in managing it, and big data analytics is usually kept on local clusters of servers. The advantage of the cloud is about optimizing available resources as efficiently as possible. Still, if implemented correctly, according to CTR, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to combine the benefits of big data with the benefits of the cloud.

Old Data Centers Bring New Set of Obstacles
Cloud computing and virtualization offer many benefits, but getting these technologies into an existing data center can be tricky. Data center managers must take their data center, which might be 15 years old or older, and rebuild it using the latest deployment principles, according to Data Center Journal.

And the growth of cloud computing, according to Data Center Journal, is turning traditional thinking about data center design on its head. When looking at a data center refresh project, the first step is to consolidate and take this opportunity to deploy new IT equipment. Virtualizing these servers at the same time will remove up to 60 percent of the physical machines in the data center, too, with the equivalent power and cooling cost reduction. See what other issues crop up when redesigning a data center.

List Highlights the Top Cloud Vendors
CRN's annual 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list sifts through the who's who in the cloud market and identifies the most innovative companies across the five major cloud categories: cloud platforms, cloud infrastructure, cloud storage, cloud security and cloud software, according to CRN.

From high-tech heavyweights to up-and-coming innovators, each company on the 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors for 2012 puts its own spin on the cloud to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack.