I am sure you have heard it refered to before…the cloud. More and more reference is being made to "the cloud" across a spectrum of different markets and people. It refers to that nebulous and hard to define space occupied by the internet. Still it is not simply the internet. The net is the backbone or foundation of the cloud. The cloud is really about net computing. It is the inevitable march toward the migration of all applications and storage as we know them/it away from our computers and ‘out there’ into the cloud. It cannot be defined fully, it is not a standard but rather a culture and activity and "way of doing things" technological. Hence the cloud.

 

The cloud is being primarily utilized by the average schmoe (you and I) and not so much by corporations as they tend to be more technologically conservative then you and I (which means in fact since you and I make up these corporations they are slowly being migrated to the cloud one employee at a time). I will give you some examples.

 

Recently (today) I was finally able to migrate all of my e-mail from Microsoft Outlook (computer-based e-mail application and storage) to GMail through IMAP. It took a while but it is done and I have since deleted all traces of Outlook from my PC. My e-mail is essentially in the cloud. I store nothing on my PC and access it through internet browser and iPod.

 

All of my writing is done primarily on the net now via blog and Facebook RSS. It is all stored in the cloud. The next big area the cloud is expanding into is office productivity (you know word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, database etc). I have removed Microsoft Office and installed OpenOffice because it is free and streamlined. It is still based on my PC though.

 

Google has been leading the charge into the cloud with things like Gmail and Google Apps. Google apps are a suite of productivity applications that are web-based. Currently you can access them for free but only their standard edition (which I am experimenting with) which should be fine for the average user. Zoho offers free personal use online productivity apps but they are relatively unknown and when you are moving into the cloud you want a heightened sense of security and a little stability (as much as that sounds like an oxymoron). ThinkFree is another online suite that is very robust and like its title offers free access to a great and functional suite of online productivity apps that work with Microsoft office docs/files. Microsoft has ponderously been moving into the cloud too but not nearly as fast of Google and some of the smaller more agile companies. Knowing Microsoft they will move into the cloud through acquisition rather then ingenuity.

 

One of the things I like about cloud computing is the accessibility it creates. I can access my e-mail and office applications from anywhere on the planet with web access (which is practically everywhere now). I can also access them with almost any wifi/web enabled device like an Android device, cell phone, etc. Security has always frightened people away from doing such things but to be honest the organizations that host most of this data are far more secure then the average person’s laptop or desktop. This is the reality of the cloud, it is in fact not really a cloud at all. You have simply outsourced your application storage and functionality to servers elsewhere on the planet.

 

What does this mean for the PC as we know it (and the Mac for you few Mac addicts)? HUGE change. The desktop is slowly going the way of the dinosaur and the laptop is evolving into more of a web portal and content streaming device (think future iPad without the stupid name). As wifi speeds and access increase we will likely stream everything from the cloud – movies and music. That’s right music too. You thought mp3 and mp4 was the last new format? Well imagine an ipod that has no storage but streams your music from a number of different places in the cloud (kinda like Last FM on steroids).

 

The cloud and cloud computing is definitely the way to go in my opinion for the personal non-corporate user and Google and Apple have a huge headstart over other companies. The reality is that corporations will hate it because they lose massive amounts of control but will have to migrate because history has shown us that where the end-user goes privately so goes the company. There are lots of cost saving advantages to the corporate user however that revolve around storage and application fees. It is likely mini-clouds internal and centrally controlled by corporations are already being tested as a way of giving that sense of freedom to the user without losing all of the control and security (like the old Sun unix distributed workstations accessing applications stored on central servers but far sexier).

 

Anyhow – those are my random thoughts on the cloud…maybe I will see you out there.