Cloud Computing

Will most of the daily tasks currently preformed locally by the average user move to the cloud?

Some everyday tasks have already made the shift. The most obvious of these is email. For many years now people have been moving away from traditional email to the likes of Gmail. Increasingly products such as Google Docs are also becoming more popular. We have been moving towards the cloud without even realising it for a number of years. Now that the corporate world can see the great potential for profit and start to advertise cloud products such as Amazons EC2 and VMware's multiple services, cloud computing is the biggest buzz word in town.  The paradigm shift to the cloud until recently, was a slow and natural progression to utilise new and improved network technology. It is now being pushed forward and may be about to go to the next level.

Chrome OS from Google is currently in beta. CLOUD from Good OS is currently in private beta and pre installed on the Gigabite M912 Touch Screen Netbook. These are just two of the many operating systems set to hit the mainstream that are 100% cloud orientated. They essentially allow the machine they are installed on to function solely as a browser. One of the main competitors for Googles Chrome OS is Jolicloud, produced by a French company it is another cloud centred OS, however it also allows files and programs to be stored and installed locally. Easy access to cloud based products such as drop box are built into the operating system

For these operating systems to be viable it is not hard to imagine the majority of every day computing tasks moving to the cloud. If they don’t these products are worthless.  A quick scan through some of the 700 plus apps available for Jolicloud shows how far we have come already.  Cloud video and photo editing apps, although basic are available alongside cloud word processing and publishing apps.

Several products have recently been developed to let you create a desktop environment that runs in the browser. Confusingly these are also called Cloud Operating Systems. They are not operating systems in the traditional sense, ie they do not run on or control your computer hardware. Hosted on a cloud service, all the application processing happens in the cloud making data more accessible from mobile phones tablets and netbooks. Glide OS is one of the leaders offering 30gig free storage, and a suite of software including word processing, presentation, email, photo and media products.

The advantage of being able to access all of your data anywhere from any machine makes the cross over to cloud computing more attractive. The elasticity of the cloud, ie the need to only pay for storage, processing capacity and software as we need and use it is another very positive factor.

On the down side a certain amount of control is lost to the cloud, how safe or private is our data? One of the major stumbling blocks for cloud computing, especially relevant in Ireland is the quality of our internet connections. Without fast always on access the cloud is a non runner. As John Burdette of Sun Microsystems stated “The network is the computer”.

I feel that eventually the majority of the average user’s everyday tasks will move to the cloud. Rapid growth in the sector spurred on by the corporate dollar may change what was a natural progression to utilise improved network technology. It may now in fact push network technology to improve and expand even faster as people demand a better service to fuel the cloud.



References

http://www.thenetworkisthecomputer.com/
http://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/netbooks/308465:five-best-linux-netbook-oses-for-now
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/jolicloud-chrome/
http://www.taranfx.com/free-cloud-os-gdrive
http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080529/transmedia/
http://www.speedtest.net/global.phphttp://www.glidedigital.com/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031 http://www.dropbox.com/
http://www.jolicloud.com/
http://www.thinkgos.com/
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-computing/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/