Mike Maney

One of the most talked about technologies of 2008 was unquestionably cloud computing (okay, maybe not unquestionably…this is the tech industry, afterall). Cloud computing — from consumer-level apps such as Facebook to big company entries such as Microsoft’s Azure — dominated a good part of the tech conversation over the past year.

And, like most hot technologies, a number of key players emerged. While my role in cloud computing flirts primarily around the periphery (i.e., I don’t write code), I am close enough to the conversation to notice which players seem to sit at the epicenter of the discussion.

Among the creme of the crop are five who I believe make up The 2008 Cloud Computing All-Star Team:

1. Jeff Barr (Amazon’s web services god)
2. Michael Sheehan (GoGrid evangelist extraordinaire)
3. Reuven Cohen (Enomaly founder and Cloud Camp instigator using open source to make the cloud elastic)
4. Sam Charrington (Appistry VP using cloud application platform to put a hurt on the legacy app server market)
5. Chris Gladwin (CEO of Cleversafe and the guy behind one of the hottest cloud storage technologies of ’08)

Which cloud computing players would you recruit for your all-star team? Let me know in the comments.

[Disclosure: Appistry is a client.]