Kalyan's Blog

"Cloud Computing" buzz -- what is it ?
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Diagram of cloud computing architecture.

Image via WikipediaSummary:

"The cloud" aka "The internet" -- computing is a way to access all your data and even applications from any where via Internet. Google Docs is one of the examples of storing, sharing and retrieving documents by anyone form anywhere with any internet accessible PC. The biggest trend is the separation of hardware from software. Cloud Computing is promising trend that changes the way IS manages technology in next five years. All the IT operations can be run from a third party data centers relieving IT from some of the maintainability/support issues.

Analysis:

Cloud computing will be a big part in future of technology. Instead of storing our information on one computer or device, we store them in the clouds – over the internet and are thus accessible via our work computers, home computers and personal devices.

The growing requirement these days is accessibility of documents or applications in a centralized location. Two or three PCs at home and another PC at work, it is difficult to manage and work on same documents from multiple locations. SaaS -- Software as a Service is next big thing I feel that will avoid document versions clutter by making documents available at centralized location. Adobe made its photoshop software -- "Photoshop Express" available free for all online users. No-installation-required version is easy to access and user will get the same photo editing experience as in an desktop installed version.

Amazon has done a great job in commercializing the idea of cloud computing, and of bringing infrastructure as a service to start ups. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides re sizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Does cloud computing makes money for the companies ? May be not for every company that's in cloud computing. Google was able to cash by getting as many people as possible looking at advertising alongside search and other various software offerings.

I think the market is not yet ready for prime time. Free web based apps still lacks some powerful features to replace desktop version. Security is one major area of concern I feel that limits what can be done in "cloud computing".

Source:

What Does Cloud Computing Mean for You?