Cloud computing

Posted by Ed Nice on 17 September 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: cloud computing, google, microsoft, browser, thin client, office applications

When you have been around for any length of time, you see many things being re-used, re-invented or re-invigorated.

Whether this is Kurasawa films into westerns, Shakespeare into contemporary dance spectaculars or some computer trend into , errrrmmm, another trend with a different name but essentially the same logical process, it's clear that what goes around comes around. And around. And around.

Is there truly anything that is new? Well, probably not a great deal. In technology, we get bigger, faster and lighter things, but essentially,there is input, processing and output.

All the really exciting things happen in the way we use these advances in technology. How we communicate to the user, where we store the data and where it is accessed from. Take, for example. cloud computing.

I know it's been around a while, but what is it and why is it so cool and why has technology suddenly allowed it to exist.

Actually, it's been around for almost 40 years, is quite a good idea and is just really a fancy name for remote applications.

It is cooler now, because of the changes in technology that have given us faster internet, cheap disk space, faster processors, Ajax, usable browsers and most importantly of all, huge corporations that only work in the on-line world.

So what exactly is cloud computing? It is essentially the storage and processing of documents and applications on a remote server, that can be opened, edited, manipulated and changed on line, normally through a web interface that runs in a browser.

But hold on, isn't that just like a mainframe used to work? Well, essentially, yes.

In the old days when you had to wear brown corduroys, have a beard and look like an extra from an OU program to work with computers, unless you had a big computer in a university somewhere, computers were really quite feeble. Something with the power of my mobile phone was as big as a house.

Necessity, being the mother of invention, made some bright sparks come up with X Windows, which was a way of using a small computer to connect to a large computer in a different romm, building or continent, which you could use to do your number crunching. This was essentially the idea behind cloud computing.

This is also the thing that led to mainframes, thin client systems, AS/400 minicomputers [ironically, often really big] remote desktops and a whole host of usefule distributed processing that made it easier to centralise and share data, processes and documents.

These days, we are rarely short of processing power, but we are often short of time.

The advantages of cloud computing as we see it today, with Google Docs and Microsoft Office Online, is the ability to share information, irrespective of setup geographical or time differences.

If you have a browser, you have Google Docs. You don't need to wait for the IT department to come and install some office software. You can write your report in a hotel room in Hawaii while MIS in Scunthorpe add the figures and the MD in Timbuktoo approves it.

Of course you can just e-mail copies around. But versioning then becomes an issue. This really is an incredibly useful interpretation of an old idea.

If, like me, you use several computers, it is a breeze to centralise your documents knowing they aren't on the other PC or on your forgotten USB stick.

Of course cloud computing isn't just online office applications. In reality, any shared web application belongs to the family, although we've just called it by other names. With more bespoke applications being written as browser based rather then desktop software, we really are already deep in the clouds. What's that you say, is this new thin client thing really taking off...?

If you haven't used something like Google Docs or stored files in something like http://skydrive.live.com/ , you really should try it and see how it makes working smarter, faster and easier.