Linda posted on September 26, 2008 15:32
If you read Thursday’s post, you already know that I had the pleasure of listening to John Kelly from Google’s Ann Arbor office at the Lansing Economic Club lunch in East Lansing. John concluded his remarks with a few thoughts about cloud computing – a concept that was new to many in the audience but is currently generating a lot of talk in the technology community.
For those of you not familiar with the term, ‘cloud’ is a metaphor for the Internet. ‘Cloud computing’ refers to using IT related capabilities that are available as a service through the Internet, rather than providing those capabilities on your own server or workstation. Some believe that ten years from now, cloud computing will have taken over and none of us will be talking about how to configure our new server, unless we are working for one of those big companies like Google that is providing services.
This is already happening at the consumer level, even though most consumers wouldn’t say they are cloud computing. Ten years ago, if you wanted maps on your computer, you bought a program and installed it. Now you just go to Google Maps or MapQuest and get the information free. Consumers are starting to expect that the job can be done with a free tool. Of course, free to the consumer doesn’t mean that someone isn’t paying for it.
Without a doubt, cloud computing would have some advantages. My laptop computer simply becomes a tool to access my applications and data, not the device that houses them. So if I drop it in a puddle and it doesn’t work anymore, I just use a different laptop to gain access. If I don’t have to have a server to run my database application, I will save money on equipment and on on-going maintenance. And collaboration is easier. I can set up a secure area for marketing materials and make them available to others who need to update them or access them to distribute. None of us will need to have access to any particular workstation to do it. Documents become much more like a web page than the documents we know today.
There are many applications today that can exist in the cloud rather than your office. KI has an application that manages our business. We chose to buy a server and the software and manage it in our office. We could have decided to let the software developer host the application on their server. Either way, we can get to the application through the internet. There are many companies already offering a wide variety of hosted applications such as Exchange and Sharepoint. Several CRM packages are available as hosted applications.
But some of us will balk at relinquishing control of our data to the ‘cloud’. Will it really be secure there? Will our competition be able to find it and steal it? How will we know that it is really being backed up? Perhaps that will change as people my age turn over the reins to a younger generation that has different expectations.
And of course, line of business applications will probably never be free. Instead of buying a server and paying to maintain it, you will be paying a monthly fee to whoever provides the service. Some will embrace the predictability of expenses under this scenario.
If you are a business owner, I would love to hear from you. What do you think about cloud computing? Is this a concept you would consider for your business and why or why not?