At one point during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, I thought I’d fallen into a time warp. I suddenly found myself listening to pitches that might have been appropriate in the 1990s at a mainframe computer convention, not a cutting-edge event like this summit is billed.

First, Adam Selipsky of Amazon spent 30 minutes touting Amazon Web Services, the back-end services that the bookseller first developed for its own operations and now pitches to small and medium-sized business. I could have been back in the days of client-server as Selipsky droned on about retail and payment systems, reliability, support--all the things near and dear to an IT manager. Then he had a spokesman for Zillow.com, the real estate site, come on and talk about how Amazon Web Services had made it easier for Zillow to operate. This was what we used to call the "reference client testimonial" in the old days. Maybe the only departure from a 1990s presentation was the slightly irreverent slogan, “We Make Muck So You Don’t Have To.”

The back-to-the-enterprise theme continued when we moved into the Launchpad segment of the conference, where six finalists vied for “Best in Show.” Spiceworks’ first slide trumpeted “160,000 IT professionals can’t be wrong” as the company touted its network monitor capability, IT asset management, and IT help desk services. Two of the other finalists also touched on those essential-but-less-than-exciting services that distinguished the old IT world. ClickForensics pitched a product to detect click fraud and CleverSet pitched its personalization product, which promises to use all available data and the latest algorithms to make sure that the ads and suggestions served up to the web surfer are the most suitable. Not surprisingly, CleverSet’s immediate practicality won it “Best in Show” and “Most Likely to Exit First,” from the audience, who voted in typical high-tech fashion by clapping.

Has Web 2.0 become a bore? While there were plenty of fanciful and just plain fun companies present at the Summit, including one Launchpad presenter, Realius, a fantasy real estate game, the fact is that entrepreneurs (and their investors) are looking for  customers who are willing and able to pay--and that often means essential services. In a sense, they are moving into the computing services sector that has long been dominated by the likes of IBM and EDS. But unlike those giants, who manage the customer’s hardware and software, sometimes on the customer’s own premises, these new Web 2.0 enterprise players offer services through “cloud computing.” The services are offered “on demand,” over the Internet, meaning that the customer may not even know what specific hardware or software the provider is using to track their transactions, fulfill their orders, or even provide raw computing power for big calculation tasks.

These new web-based enterprise services companies are not world-changing, but the increment they offer signals an important shift of focus in the universe of the Web. Theoretically, providers such as Amazon and Spiceworks allow startups and small businesses to focus on what they do best and avoid being bogged down with IT challenges. An online retailer may not have the expertise or resources to build a system from scratch to manage its sales, inventory, and shipping. It can turn to an Amazon and plug into an existing system that appears seamless to customers.

These new providers offer an alternative to the high-priced, high-maintenance products traditional enterprise software companies such as SAP and Oracle offer. It’s a sign that the ad-driven concept may no longer be the only proven business model on the Web. It may be a lot more boring to sit through these pitches, but they’re a sign the Internet is growing up.