What is Cloud?
What is the cloud? I was asked this very question by one of my friends… I hesitated to answer the question. How do I start? What information should I convey? I wanted my answer to provide a solid deterministic feel. I have been working on this cloud for so long.
Unfortunately, cloud means a lot of different things for different people. For Silicon Valley startups, it is all about building/ utilizing the cloud for their customers. For end users, it provides a level of convenience unsurpassed by anything else in Technology Offerings.
Lets focus on end users for a little while. Since the PC dawn (around 1980′s), the PC has been the hub of information technology for professionals, casual users, gamers, children etc. Software allowed the same piece of hardware perform multiple functions at the same time. The same machine could process accounts, do contact management, play games, look up encyclopaedia etc. Then came the internet.
Internet is a network of computers connected together. These connections allow us to refer to information residing in other computers. Lot of good information became available to people to consume, produce. Business started to take advantage of this phenomenon, and E-Commerce started to thrive: there were websites which allowed people to shop right from their computers. Banks, and other financial institutions started offering services so that their customers could start managing their accounts online. Travel sites allow for building trips online.
The promise of cloud takes this evolution further. Specialized services commoditize sophisticated software and hardware requirements away. This is happening in many different areas at once! Broadly classified, the problems being solved are:
- requiring specialized software
- Authoring tools such as Word, Visio, Power Point,…:
- Enterprise Software such as CRM, ERP, Project Management, FTP, ….
- Communication Tools such as EMail, SMS
- requiring specialized hardware
- Storage: Backup, Archive
- Computation: Virus Scanning, Spam Filtering, Search Engine, …
The convenience to users is tremendous. Specialized tasks needed for maintaining complex software/ hardware systems now goes back to specialized companies (Software as a Service vendors). No more software update nightmares, disk crashes, backups, hardware maintenance issues. Users are able to access specialized software from the comfort of their favorite web browser.
As a summary, cloud is a natural evolution of the internet technology. It brings with it the convenience, cost savings, and accessibility of specialized software to the masses of people. My friend was satisfied with my answer. Her next question: how do you go about building the cloud? will be the topic of a forthcoming post – stay tuned!!!
