Cloud, mobile cast long shadow

Newtechnology shakes up balance of power in the Silicon Valley and splits some businesses.

san francisco » Smartphones, tablets and other gadgets aren’t just changing the waywe live andwork. They are shaking up Silicon Valley’s balance of power and splitting up businesses.

Long-established companies such as Hewlett-Packard and eBay are scrambling to regain their footing to better compete against mobile-savvy trendsetters like Apple and Google, as well as rising technology stars that have built businesses around “cloud computing.”

That term covers a swath of Internet-driven services that shifted technology from the dayswhen software users paid a one-time fee to buy and install programs on individual machines where they also stored all their data on hard drives.

But with the advent of the “cloud,” people can now rent software to use over the Internet. This enables customers to access documents, pictures and other vital information from any kind of Internet-connected device, a convenience that’s become a necessity during the past few years as people increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets instead of laptop and desktop computers.

Business software makers such as Salesforce.com, VMware and Workday built their entire business models around the cloud. All have delivered impressive revenue growth that turned their stocks into hot commodities. Online storage services Dropbox and Box have yet to go public. But they have been minted with big valuations fromventure capitalistswho believe they will thrive amid the increased