The No. 1 App Coming to the Cloud? Your PC

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What’s the killer app for the cloud these days? If you ask one of the biggest data sourcing companies, TPI, which acts as matchmaker between outsourcers and outsourcing service providers, companies looking to cloud computing want to move something very basic out there – their PCs.

“Companies are buying access to terminals for a lot less money and putting everything you would currently now know as your PC out in the cloud,” says Tom Young, a partner and managing director at TPI. And the benefits are not just financial.

“Doing this will let you log in at any terminal and have full access to your PC,” he says. And for the managed services-minded solution providers out there, such an arrangement simplifies tasks such as virus remediation, updates, patches and upgrades. What could be simpler?

The down side could be for the companies who make their money selling new PCs into the enterprise, especially if this wave of outsourcing happens in time to usurp what many have been hoping will be a major PC upgrade cycle among enterprise customers in 2010.