A report released by the National Inflation Association (NIA) indicates that by 2013, cloud computing could be a $150 billion market – bigger than the dot-com boom of the year 2000. The proof, according to the NIA, lies in the cloud’s solid performance on Wall Street.

Just take a look at 2012’s cloud IPOs thus far, says the NIA in a release. SaaS e-commerce solution developer Demandware (NASDAQ: DWRE) debuted earlier in March at $16/share, and at the time of writing, was trading at $25.11, a 64% gain (approximately). Guidewire Software (NYSE: GWRE), provider of system software, went public in January for $13 per share, but is trading at $32.89 as of market close on Friday – a 40% boost. And digital media distribution specialist Brightcove (NASDAQ: BCOV) went from $11 to $20.95 since its February premiere, a 54% increase. Those are impressive statistics, made all the moreso since they’re verifiable.

The closely related social networking market is also due to take off, according to the NIA. The hype around the upcoming Facebook IPO notwithstanding, the Jive Software IPO (NASDAQ: JIVE) has gone well for the enterprise social network provider, currently standing at $26.78, a huge improvement from it’s $10 debut.

But the most hype-worthy company in the social market, to hear the NIA tell it, is BroadVision and its Clearvale platform. During the dot-com boom, BroadVision was a $13 billion market force, and the NIA thinks it’s due for a repeat as it moves to adopt cloud and mobility technologies. Basically, the NIA says, if BroadWire can get its market share up to even ten percent by 2016, its revenues could reach $640 million. Here’s where the NIA’s logic gets a little specious: Facebook trades on the private marketplace for 27 times its total sales, so if the market keeps expanding as its been, BroadVision could trade for 27 times that hypothetical $640 million figure and become a $17.28 billion company. That’s a lot of uncertainty around such a bold claim.

For the curious, the NIA released a separate, but related, report on the state of the social market.

Service Angle

Something the NIA doesn’t once bring up in its release is the fact that the dot-coom boom was followed by the dot-com bust. It’s hard to take it too seriously in that light, especially since the NIA is a) dedicated to raising issues around hyperinflation (as you may have guessed from the name) and gold/silver trading, not technology and b) an owner of 184,901 shares of BroadVision Inc. and 58,000 shares of Jive Software.

All the same, as an avowed believer in the transformative power of cloud for enterprises of all sizes, I believe in the message, if not necessarily the numbers or the company-specific hype: the cloud is only picking up steam. Skeptics may well take the stance that the NIA’s report indicates that customers of cloud services are being sold a bill of goods, but that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Instead, take it as a wake-up call that it’s only worth going into business with service providers who both add value and can give some kind of assurance that they won’t go belly-up and leave you high and dry. Don’t buy hype. Buy business value.