And the Oscar goes to: Cloud computing

Aside from The King’s Speech being recognized as 2010’s best movie, another important trend realized at the 83rd Academy Awards on Sunday was the growth of cloud computing in Hollywood.

Many of the companies that produced the nominated animated films, such as Pixar with Toy Story 3, rely heavily on cloud computing for collaborative efforts. Dreamworks, creators of many popular animated movies, such as the Kung Fu Panda series, recently jumped to the cloud. Other major companies have their own plans, as well.

“Our strategy going forward is to push as much as we can into the cloud,” said Darcy Antonellis, president of technical operations for Warner Bros. “When you can scale up or scale back so easily, that’s a big economic advantage.”

Like Toy Story 3, fellow Best Animated Picture nominee How to Train Your Dragon was also a cloud-computing-assisted film, developed and created by Dreamworks. The managed IT service allows many of the film’s technical developers to work together over a network, the same way two business workers share a document through a cloud computing suite.

As more cloud vendors appear in the Hollywood landscape, the trend will continue in, and beyond, Southern California. IDC has already predicted worldwide IT spending on the cloud will reach $44.2 billion by 2013. However, if major film studios continue to make the jump, this figure could increase significantly.