By now, you have heard, read and seen more about the Cloud than you probably ever wanted. And, for those of you who live in corner offices - you are almost certainly wondering why everyone keeps bothering you with something that surely belongs in the dark realms of your IT department. But from Amazon's new self-serve super computing platforms, Google's low cost enterprise productivity tools to Apple's vision for online entertainment - the Cloud is a business revolution that no CEO can ignore. Here is your cheat sheet on the top 5 strategic issues that you need to know about.

I've enjoyed playing with Lion, the new Mac operating system, this week. The native apps really fly, interface gestures have matured and desktop spaces finally feels intuitive enough to allow me to navigate multiple screens of work with ease. My computer doesn't just feel faster - I feel faster. So in a way, my mind got the upgrade. And that perhaps is really the most significant part of the Lion launch - the upgrade process. It was seamless. I clicked buy on the Mac App store, went to bed, and woke up with a new operating system.

It seems fashionable lately for hard boiled tech types to talk about consumers with a wide eyed fervor bordering on the frightening. And even worse, they have even come up with a new word to assault the language - Consumerization. Hype aside, what the trend really means is this: enterprise technology is being increasingly driven by the platform and device choices of everyday consumers. Rest assured, this is more than just your employees spending time accessing Facebook when they should be working. The changing role of IT is part of a much bigger shift in the nature of the Web. Applications are being replaced by platforms, and software by the Cloud - and that ultimately means a change in the way we work and, as organisations, create value for our customers.