It almost seems silly, but it shows how bad things have been before the last two days. The stock market had a second day up. It's been a while since we could say that. Today's gains were also well above the gains which were lost yesterday and the DJIA had its best day in almost a month. Bank stocks led the rally today, although many sectors shared in the joy. Suddenly, DJIA 10,000 was back today after a more than 200-point rally.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,018.28 +274.66 (2.82%)
S&P 500 1,060.24 +32.18 (3.13%)
Nasdaq 2,159.47 +65.59 (3.13%)

Top Analyst Calls

While at a NetSuite (N) conference recently, I met with the folks at SAVVIS (SVVS), which provides hosting and infrastructure services. I was actually surprised to see them there.

But then again, SAVVIS is making a big effort to penetrate the fast-growing cloud-computing market. And from what I can tell, the company has a big advantage with its large customer base and global footprint.

NetSuite (N), which provides a suite of web-based business applications, usually has a tough first quarter (this is typically the case for software companies). But this time around, the company was able buck the trend. In Q1, NetSuite had a record quarter, with revenues up 5.7% to $43.9 million and cash flows from operations of $4.7 million.

I recently attended the NetSuite developer's conference, and got a good background on the overall strategy. I also was able to talk to many of the company's partners. All in all, there was much enthusiasm for the NetSuite platform as companies want to benefit from the growing customer base.

Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ), which just had a very good first quarter, is set to continue expanding its consulting gigs with a new service called "Cloud Design Services." Sounding like something from a private kindergarten class, the new service has a heavy statement: that more computing is shifting into the internet and off the local server.

HP's new offering here will be to design private "clouds" companies can use to connect users and the information they seek using intelligent design unique to the needs of each business it consults with. This is something new -- and a step above "off the shelf" offerings by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) -- and it puts HP in an enviable spot: designing private "internet clouds" for businesses from the ground up.

Google (GOOG) Apps -- which includes a suite of cloud-computing programs like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sites -- has a decent footprint, with more than two million business customers. However, the company realizes it needs to do more as competitors come into the market, like Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM). Yes, the cloud is getting crowded.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) continues to delve outside its retail roots and add services anywhere it can. But, this latest venture is a bit baffling: backup services for your mobile phone?

So-called "cloud computing" is the big-thing in Corporate America – that is, offloading information technology (IT) services to the web. It's a cost-saver since there is no need to buy infrastructure.

Some of the hot players in the space include salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM) and NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N).

Well,there is another company getting traction: Google, Inc (Nasdaq: GOOG).

And, it should be no surprise. After all, Google has a global web infrastructure that has massive scale. Moreover, it has the technical capability to build mission-critical applications -- and yet they are easy to use.

It's hard to imagine Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) as anything but a search engine for most consumers and even business leaders. The company that probably has more grand ambitions than any I can think of may want to tackle providing computing horsepower to needy customers in the future, though -- and in turn, become a service provider of sorts. This is on top of its ambition to become the largest advertising network the planet has ever seen.

The scale of Google's global network and how it works technically would boggle the mind of many a Ph.D. It's those brainiacs who designed the sprawling network of Google's cheaper-by-the-dozen normal computer servers who are now trying to find more ways to utilize all that computing power outside of providing search results in a fraction of a second to billions of queries every month. As Google continues to build massive data centers, what is it going to do with all that power? Become Skynet, the infamous, world-dominating global computer network from the Terminator movies? Nah -- there are bigger business fish to fry.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced recently that it was getting involved in cloud computing.