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There has been a thunderstorm of growing noise surrounding Cloud Computing in the past 24 months. Vendors, analysts, journalists and membership groups have all rushed to cover the Cloud medium - although everyone seems to have their own opinion and differing definition of cloud computing.
According to the most common definition, it is Internet-based computing where shared resources, software and information are supplied to users on demand, rather like a utility company would supply electricity, water or gas. The term is not new; vendors such as Salesforce.com have provided Cloud services in different guises for many years. Other players have been swift to get on board, including Microsoft, HP, IBM, Amazon and Google, to name but a few. Put simply, users now have the choice of a new way to consume computing power, applications and data. No longer is it necessary to buy software on a floppy disk or a CD. Instead, you can have immediacy of delivery through the Internet for an application you want now. Users have been educated into this way of working with iTunes and app stores, and they’ve come to expect a seamless link between their locally run application and data and information from the Internet - and at a very digestible and economic price point. Buying a robust, polished application or game for below £1 is now taken for granted.
As an average user you are also likely to be using cloud computing in the form of webmail, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and a plethora of other services; storing what you would consider private information in the Cloud without knowing where it is in reality... or even caring.
In effect, Cloud has become a very simple and trendy way of describing all things that occur outside the firewall whether it be on a corporate network or on your home PC. Cloud computing is already helping to shape the way we digest IT both at home and in the workplace. It is simply a new ‘form factor’, a new way of delivering a solution to a customer. We have seen new form factors disrupting and changing many market sectors already. Think of Blockbuster Video, once the darling of the entertainment world and now struggling to survive against the new delivery factors of Netflix and LOVEFiLM. Tower Records, once a worldwide brand, has been put out of business by the ability for users to now purchase music faster and cheaper via iTunes and online music stores.
The same trends are occurring in computing. The extraordinary speed at which Cloud computing has come to dominate the landscape has caught many by surprise. None deny it is the Zeitgeist for 2010 when looking back at the past year. With bold press statements such as “Cloud computing will boost UK economy by £30bn a year” grabbing headlines, it’s no wonder it is at the centre of so much discussion and scepticism.
With Cloud computing expected to enjoy an adoption rate and growth of between 30 to 40 per cent per year, every year for the next five years, vendors are rushing to launch and push their cloud offerings. From a customer point of view, it is obviously a good thing to have more choices - although you should be aware that in reality there is a wide range of maturity levels amongst vendors, with some of them taking their first steps and looking for their first few candidates for experimental purposes. The major brands, Microsoft, Google, HP, etc are all endorsing cloud as key to their future (Microsoft recently announced the majority of its developers have been moved to its cloud platform), and in both business and at home it will certainly change the way we do so many things.