For some insight into where the IT industry is headed, it might be useful to take a look at the move by several of the sector's billionaires to infiltrate each others' lines of business. Quentin Hardy at Forbes examines the forces--especially cloud computing--that are driving this trend.

At one time Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) played in very separate sandboxes, but with the onslaught of cloud computing, they are now competing head-to-head. 

"Corporate egocentricity dictates that Cisco says the cloud is all about networking switches, while Oracle sells a vision based on databases. Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) says this world depends on servers; Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) sees it in operating systems and applications software, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) views it through a lens of domain-specific functions only it can effectively design," Hardy writes.

A combination of Internet-based services and Moore's law is behind the confluence of so many different businesses. "As more computers hook together at higher speeds, and the semiconductors in each gain density at an increasingly lower cost, the more complex software you can write, and it starts to do more. Do enough, and what you're doing looks like what the other tech guy does, too," he writes.

For more:
- see Quentin Hardy's post at Forbes

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