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Watching the Clouds go by
With open source technology moving more and more to the forefront of business, cloud computing is becoming more and more the norm. Cloud Computing, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “Internet-based development and use of computer technology. Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.”
In other words, it is using technology (i.e. Google Apps) while online and having the software and all your data stored on the servers. It is basically like using a hosting company for all your software needs.
People are growing more and more comfortable with using cloud computing because it relieves them of the onus of having to back-up and store their data. Not to mention, the data is readily available from any Internet source like a colleague’s computer, or at an Internet café when traveling abroad. The uses that cloud computing offers are great.
Large corporations or businesses with people spread out all over the country are finding different versions of cloud computing very useful. For examples, a large company that receives sales leads from many different people and areas, would find that a technology such as Sales Force to be an asset to their business development efforts.
However – to be a fair presenter of information – one must share the downsides of cloud computing. For example, the sharing of documents and the conversion of documents isn’t all together there yet. Therefore, making it almost necessary for everyone that will be sharing documents to be using the same online source. Also, there are some documents that people are going to want saved on their personal hard drive vs. saved on a server in the middle of Nebraska.
Personally, I fall into both camps. I love the ease of sharing documents through Goggle Apps and Basecamp. It helps keep myself and several different clients and colleagues on the same page at the same time. However – for my personal documents and to ease my never-ending fear of documents getting mysteriously erased – I still keep everything that I do on my own hard-drive. It doesn’t hurt to have a back-up right?
