Is cloud computing an integrated ETL function ?

Cloud computing does nothing to solve tricky data integration problems that companies may be wrestling with. Cloud-based systems do not do the hard integration work - that's still up to the enterprise. If an organization chooses Salesforce.com CRM on demand instead of SAP or Oracle CRM deployed within their firewall, does anything really change? Yes, there's no doubt that there are potential benefits as far as getting CRM up and running goes, but then what? In the enterprises I've worked with, the bulk of the projects were not about implementing some new vendor package. Some of that was always occurring, but there was plenty more that was about integration, enhancements, and other development activities.