At the time, gridcoin and Boinc WU's is the only technology that almost have all the infrastructural needs to launch first ever decentralized cloud computing platform being able to compete with Google Cloud / Azure / IBM Bluemix, and more important be competitive.
Think of it not only as a research platform, but also as a platform where someone can deploy Instances, databases, even virtual routers among many other technologies.
The problem is, if Gridcoin Team don't do that promptly, someone else will. SPARC is on it's way to this scenario by announcing possible separation from Boinc. Reading between the lines, this scenario perfectly fits.
What we are talking here is a business ecosystem, where each individual can buy cloud resources for real money, get's whitelisted for the proportional amount, and as a result, those who run these WU's or Instances or Vapps get not rewarded, but paid in GRC.
Once it happens for the first time that somebody buy processing power distributed through teamgrc to mine any other crypto with minimal ROI, GRC will skyrocket strong above every other crypto.
The problem is, this is a very lucrative business, and it's likely i'm not the only one who see what's coming (one of the reason for this post is to check these assumptions against other opinions). I have nothing against SPARC or any other projects that aims towards this goal, but what would be very bad is have a centralized business entity to deploy this model.
In my opinion, it's a race against time.
I would be happy to hear opinions about this topic, or if it's already discussed somewhere before.