Living on cloud nine (From The Oxford Times)

Living on cloud nine

8:50am Thursday 15th January 2009 in

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You might not have heard the term, but you will almost certainly have experienced cloud computing first hand in one form or another over the last few years.

Whether you are tapping away on your laptop sending an e-mail using Hotmail or Google Mail, or using some of Google’s online applications, such as Google Docs or Google Calendar, you are experiencing cloud computing.

Put simply, it is a genre of computing in which IT-related resources are provided as a service through the Internet (or the cloud). These come without the user’s knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

This is commonly known as ‘software as a service’ or SaaS, where an application is hosted as a service and provided to customers via the Internet. The possibilities for such software are endless, and are certainly not limited merely to e-mail.

Whole operating systems and mainstream packages such as Microsoft Office will soon be available via the ‘cloud’, completely eliminating the need to install and maintain software on your own PC.

One hugely successful ‘software as a service’ provider is salesforce.com, a web-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool used by thousands of businesses worldwide to manage customer data, process transactions and boost customer service levels.

It seems the possibilities are endless. And the cost of these new fangled services? Well sometimes you pay for it, sometimes you don’t, but increasingly you will.

The advantages of utilising cloud computing are extremely powerful, not least that it completely removes the need for software to be installed, maintained and fixed when something goes wrong on your own PC.

The software is accessed via a web browser and maintained remotely by men in white coats with extraordinarily high IQs, who know the intricacies of the software from top to bottom.

The data related to the service you are using is also backed up and stored by the service provider, so no worries here either. You also don’t need to fork out a large amount of cash to buy a piece of software upfront, you simply pay a monthly fee per user, freeing up cash for other expenses, a major boon for businesses, particularly in the current climate.

But there is a fairly hefty drawback with cloud computing.

The coloured cable that connects your PC to the outside world, or your wireless connection might just stop working. When it does, it’s disastrous because with a failed Internet connection, you have no way of connecting to your service. You are also reliant on those men in white coats to diligently maintain the service, to not make any mistakes, and to ensure that it is constantly up and running.

And what happens if the service provider you are using becomes less than solvent?

How do you get hold of your valuable data which might be stored on the other side of the world in some dark distant corner of Kansas? It wouldn’t be easy, that’s for sure.

But it need not all be doom and gloom, because on balance, cloud computing has a lot to be said for it, and it has the potential for a huge IT headache to be effectively outsourced, and a weight lifted off the shoulders of both consumers and businesses, irrespective of geographic location.

Bolt on to that the ever-increasing resilience of broadband connections and speed enhancements, and it is certainly possible to see the potential.

So where do we go from here? Well it’s certainly not an all-or-nothing approach. We have made our initial forays into cloud computing with the likes of Hotmail and Google Mail, and this works well for most people.

In time, the cost effectiveness and flexibility of cloud computing is likely to coax more and more people into its cosy clutches, and the number and type of services offered is almost certain to take off.

Will it make the way we access IT and IT services simpler? Probably. Will it make things cheaper? Quite likely. Will it affect you, I and everyone else out there who uses IT? Definitely. Watch this space...

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