There are more than a few critics of cloud computing, even at PCWorld; I'm probably one of them. But I've been turning over in my mind different perspectives on the cloud. I've tried to set aside the views of the IT executive, who seems to dominate the debate.
Instead, I've been thinking about what it offers lowly end-users, or for programmers who create the software. What does cloud computing mean for the rest of us?
As far as computer-illiterate end-users are concerned, cloud computing offers many benefits. For example, have you ever lost a file or an update to a document, because you didn't save it before a crash happened?
With an online office suite like Google Docs, it's impossible to lose work. Files are automatically saved every few seconds. There's even revisioning, meaning that you can step back to a file when it was in a previous state. Google (GOOG) Docs isn't alone in offering this. Cloud file storage serviceDropbox lets you revert to a previous version of your files, too.
The best part is that cloud services don't even require users to understand what "saving" is. There's no longer a need to understand file systems, ushering in a level of simplicity computer engineers have been searching for since the personal computer was invented.
Cloud computing offers more permanence for your files than desktop computing. Give yourself a few minutes to think about that. CDs degrade over time. Hard disks crash. But no file will ever disappear from the cloud unless you choose to delete it.
Sure, a cloud provider can go bust. But online providers usually give you ample warning to get your data off their service if that kind of thing happens. And, try as I might, I really can't see a company like Google going under anytime soon.
How about looking at cloud computing from a programmer's point of view? For a programmer, cloud computing offers something that's been desired for years--the ability to create software that's operating system independent. If you manage to make your app work in Firefox and Chrome running on Windows, then in all likelihood, it will work well on Mac and Linux computers too. Mobile computing devices are also invited to the party, or at least contemporary devices that have the power to run such apps.
Even if a few tweaks are necessary, they'll be nothing like the complexity of recoding applications for every different platform.
No comments:
Post a Comment