I am going to stick my neck out and say that cloud computing is the future. Cloud computing enabling technology trends are converging. I see more and more lower powered computing products that have great connectivity appearing such as netbooks, and touch based tablets. Future cloud products will be greener, they will have a great battery life because they are so low powered, and will become incredibly portable.
All the heavy lifting is being done by powerful servers 'in the cloud'. Just a few weeks ago I would have said that cloud computing would be a niche because it would be impossible to play demanding 3D games or edit video purely using cloud based server technologies. I was completely wrong.
Look at the advantages:-
- Your computer will weigh almost nothing.
- It will last 20 hours on a single charge.
- You will be able to play Crysis 5 on every device you own.
- The difference between a desktop and laptop computer will just be the size of the display.
- Computer's will get much cheaper than the cheapest netbooks are today, since there is no need for a beefy processor or much if any storage.
- You will have 128 cores at your disposal in the cloud. In fact the number of cores your computer has will dynamically change depending on what processing needs you have.
- It is green computing in the extreme.
- Who could afford a top of the range gaming rig with 4 SLI extreme graphics cards to play their games with? Everyone can have one if it is part of your subscription to the cloud gaming service.
- Once you have edited your video, it can be instantly posted on every site you want since it is already compressed, and already uploaded.
- Want an extremely powerful computer games system to play on your 3D TV in the lounge? That will cost the price of two games. It might even be free with the subscription service to play games via any device in the house.
- Full data redundancy, no need to ever back up. You already have all your data spread amongst the cloud so that it would be impossible to loose anything.
- No need to ever upload anything, as every bit of content you generate is already out there. Instant links are simply created to the same data using smart tagged meta data.
Having your data hosted by a datacentre is far safer than having it on your computer, even if you are careful enough to have local backup storage. How many of us have an off-site backup? Drives may fail in a datacentre, but no data is at risk on large industrial Raid storage systems.
Now for the really far out stuff
I believe Microsoft Windows' consumer market share will continue to decline. Microsoft (if it has any sense) will move into the cloud business big-time, to offer businesses and consumers back-end services.
Windows will all but disappear on the desktop, as Microsoft moves into back end cloud services. Linux finally gets its day as the desktop of choice for many people and is used almost exclusively in business on the desktop. Apple specialises in the very best consumer cloud computing kit and moves much of its software into the cloud, it also produces specialist computing kit for content production such as for film and video work. The apple experience will be delivered through OSX, Safari and Sproutcore and the iPhone will play a large part to show that cloud computing could be just the normal way computing is done in the next decade.
The sorts of software we already use day to day include many cloud services already. This blog is a cloud service, I started writing it on my Mac upstairs, I wrote some more on an Acer netbook, finally I checked it and posted it using my Ubuntu powered Sony laptop, everything created and posted in the cloud. This is normal, why would it be such a stretch to imagine many other computing tasks done in this way?
Entertainment and indeed work will just become subscription based services. The seeds of change have already been sown. Once you can play Crysis in the cloud on a netbook, anything is possible!
3 comments:
Darren Mate
Then the network goes down and you can't get access. How could it go down so catastrophically? Well how about the recent case when a big slice of the countries around the Med lost the Internet because trawlers had broken the cable.
Plus you don't own your data and nobody will accept liability when it gets lost. A few days ago I wanted some data that I haven't looked at since about 2001 and had been created in 1997 / 98. Out came one of the backups and it is now on my hard drive.
Then suddenly your supplier folds, would you trust Tiscali with your data at the moment?
Further here is another blow. Your argument relies heavily on 'the latest and fastest syndrome'. If I dig my old Toshiba Celeron Laptop out of storage and fire it up, I can use the same tools I was using 6 years ago very effectively, just a bit slower than today, though my typing speed has failed to be boosted by the extra horse power. Photoshop, check, Corel Draw check etc etc. I accept that gaming can make a case for a cloud business model.
As for the rest it is really dodgy. The people most likely to benefit are the service providers who will be taking your direct debit payments monthly, more storage sir of course that will be another fiver. The enhanced features for your video editing a snap at £3.50 a month. A lovely golden income stream. Want your data back, well just keep paying the fees. You only have a terminal with no attached storage- UNLUCKY!
As business models go making big bucks MS style from things like Windows and Office is so 1995. Why upgrade when the nearly best is free or Office 97 still works a s it always did (badly but I guess it is what your used to).
Dick Pountain of PCPro wrote this column a few months ago. I would describe him as a very savvy user with a good level of technical know how.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/columns/210966/idealog.html
I await your response.
Oh and one further thing. On the basis of recent experience when I tried to share some pages documents and a 14 slide Keynote via. iWork Beta, Apple seem to be making a 'Ballon' of cloud computing.
Oooops!
Oh and then there is the privacy / security thing. Once your data is in the cloud it is by definition insecure.
Read this from the Telegraph today.
Every phone call, email or website visit 'to be monitored'
Every phone call, email or website visit will be monitored by the state under plans to be unveiled next week.
By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor Last Updated: 6:35PM BST 24 Apr 2009
The proposals will give police and security services the power to snoop on every single communication made by the public with the data then likely to be stored in an enormous national database.
The precise content of calls and other communications would not be accessible but even text messages and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be tracked.
The move has alarmed civil liberty campaigners, and the country's data protection watchdog last night warned the proposals would be "unacceptable".
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, will argue the powers are needed to target terrorists and serious criminals who are taking advantage of the increasing complex nature of communications to plot atrocities and crimes.
A consultation document on the plans, known in Whitehall as the Interception Modernisation Programme, is likely to put great emphasis on the threat facing Britain and warn the alternative to the powers would be a massive expansion of surveillance.
But that will fuel concerns among critics that the Government is using a climate of fear to expand the surveillance state.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, the country's data watchdog, told the Daily Telegraph: "I have no problem with the targeted surveillance of terrorist suspects.
"But a Government database of the records of everyone's communications – if that is to be proposed – is not likely to be acceptable to the British public. Remember that records – who? when? where? – can be highly intrusive even if no content is collected."
It is understood Mr Thomas is concerned that even details on who people contact or sites they visit could intrude on their privacy, such as data showing an individual visiting a website selling Viagra.
Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, last month revealed he was considering lobbying ministers over the proposal, which he described as "overkill".
The proposed powers will allow police and security services to monitor communication "traffic", which is who calls, texts, emails who, when and where but not what is said.
Similarly they will be able to see which websites someone visits, when and from where but not the content of those visits.
However, if the data sets alarm bells ringing, officials can request a ministerial warrant to intercept exactly what is being sent, including the content.
The consultation is expected to include three options on how the "traffic" information is then stored: a "super database" held by the Government, a database held and run by a quango or private company at arms' length, or an order to communication providers to store every detail in their own systems, which can then be accessed by the security services is necessary.
A memo written by sources close to the project and leaked last year revealed it was fraught with technical difficulties.
Ms Smith has already claimed local authorities will not have access to the data but the Tories have warned of the "exponential increase in the powers of the state'', while the Liberal Democrats have dubbed the plans "Orwellian" and deeply worrying.
Security services fear a failure to monitor all forms of communications effectively will hamper their ability to combat terrorists and serious criminals. Sir Stephen Lander, chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, said: "Any significant reduction in the capability of law enforcement agencies to acquire and exploit intercept intelligence and evidential communications data would lead to more unsolved murders, more firearms on our streets, more successful robberies, more unresolved kidnaps, more harm from the use of Class A drugs, more illegal immigration and more unsolved serious crime."
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