"Cloud computing" is a catch-all phrase being tossed around a lot lately. It certainly can mean many different things to many different people. Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject and while I am by no means an expert on the topic, I'm observing some really interesting trends.
The current version of OS X from Apple 10.7, or Lion has a limited but reasonably useful cloud storage built into the OS environement. Assuming you have signed up for the free account of "iCloud" it allows anyone using Apple's "Pages" will automatically save things to the cloud space and it can then be accessed via any of the iOS devices - again assuming you have those apps installed on the iOS device. You also have some ability to access them via a web browser. This can certainly be a handy tool if you're only using Pages. While Pages is certainly a decent word processor, it is something akin to Adobe PageMaker and MS Word rolled into one. This is an Apple-only product, so if you're running Windows or Linux, there's no real solution if you want to go this route. It's meant to drive sales of their OS and products. There is a free storage limit of 5GB, with the ability to purchase more.
Google has their "Google Docs" which is entirely cloud-based. There is no centralized application that can be downloaded and installed. This means you absolutely MUST be connected to the Internet for this to work. While most of us work in and around environments where the Internet is available, there are still situations where the Internet isn't available. Just this weekend I was up in a mountain ski resort and there was absolutely, positively no service. No cell signal, no wifi - which means if I HAD to work, I would've needed to take a drive. Google Docs is incredible for light documents, spreadsheets and even some seriously light data functions. If you want to get serious about number crunching, you'll want a spreadsheet program. A great advantage of Google Docs is you can truly run it on any platform. Because it is browser-based, it will run on any platform that has Java on it. Google uses a rather complex series of rules with regard to the size of documents, spreadsheets or presentations - so it's safe to say you'll probably not run out of space unless you're a heavy user.
What about Microsoft? Well, they have cloud-based services, but what is currently available is part of their "Office 365" service - and it is costly. That will change when Windows 8 is released. Microsoft just announced their cloud initiative today and to say it is aggressive is pretty accurate. For starters, there's 25GB of storage that come with the account. It also appears to be a closed environment in the way Apple is closed to work within their ecosystem. A Windows Phone and/or Tablet will be required to access the "cloud" information. It's probably a little early to say how their Office apps are going to intergrade, but you can bet there will be something available in that area.
So that covers the OSes - what else is out there and how does that apply for the Business IT?
Well, DropBox is quickly becoming one of the more popular sharing methods out there. It's easy, it's multi-platform and can be used application-free by going to any web browser. That's just storage. There's a whole host of other web-based applications out there that provide a variety of services for the working people of the world. SalesForce, WebEx, Citrix, American Express, Rackspace, just to name a few companies that have a web-based presence that employees traditionally need to build some sort of user-profile to access these services. These sites typically fall outside the realm of the traditional IT-based Directory structure of Active Directory or LDAP. An IT department doesn't manage any of these log-ins or profiles for these users.
I recently ran across a company called Symplified that actually provides cloud-based directory services. Nothing really earth shattering about that fact - Google also provides some level of LDAP interaction with their Google Docs for Business service. But what got me to thinking is that with all of these cloud initiatives by Apple, Google and Microsoft is that we are seeing the beginning of a seismic shift in the way IT is going to be done in the future.
No longer is the IT department going to manage their IT equipment within their firewalls where end-users will be granted login rights through their desk or laptop to the services they need. Their computer could be anything from a dumb terminal or a computer at home - all authenticating their access via a web-browser going into the services that are managed through these central logins. Sort of like agregating the business apps of the web into a new way of doing single-sign-on.
This also doesn't take into account the SaaS, IaaS and other various methods of offering an "as a Service" function. But IT departments really can no longer look at just their local infrastructure for what they manage. At the same time they also cannot just throw up their arms and say "we can't manage these cloud services". Ultimately it is going to get merged into one management solution.
Of course the question then becomes, where does a personal account end and a business account begin. But that is a topic for another rant. :)
The current version of OS X from Apple 10.7, or Lion has a limited but reasonably useful cloud storage built into the OS environement. Assuming you have signed up for the free account of "iCloud" it allows anyone using Apple's "Pages" will automatically save things to the cloud space and it can then be accessed via any of the iOS devices - again assuming you have those apps installed on the iOS device. You also have some ability to access them via a web browser. This can certainly be a handy tool if you're only using Pages. While Pages is certainly a decent word processor, it is something akin to Adobe PageMaker and MS Word rolled into one. This is an Apple-only product, so if you're running Windows or Linux, there's no real solution if you want to go this route. It's meant to drive sales of their OS and products. There is a free storage limit of 5GB, with the ability to purchase more.
Google has their "Google Docs" which is entirely cloud-based. There is no centralized application that can be downloaded and installed. This means you absolutely MUST be connected to the Internet for this to work. While most of us work in and around environments where the Internet is available, there are still situations where the Internet isn't available. Just this weekend I was up in a mountain ski resort and there was absolutely, positively no service. No cell signal, no wifi - which means if I HAD to work, I would've needed to take a drive. Google Docs is incredible for light documents, spreadsheets and even some seriously light data functions. If you want to get serious about number crunching, you'll want a spreadsheet program. A great advantage of Google Docs is you can truly run it on any platform. Because it is browser-based, it will run on any platform that has Java on it. Google uses a rather complex series of rules with regard to the size of documents, spreadsheets or presentations - so it's safe to say you'll probably not run out of space unless you're a heavy user.
What about Microsoft? Well, they have cloud-based services, but what is currently available is part of their "Office 365" service - and it is costly. That will change when Windows 8 is released. Microsoft just announced their cloud initiative today and to say it is aggressive is pretty accurate. For starters, there's 25GB of storage that come with the account. It also appears to be a closed environment in the way Apple is closed to work within their ecosystem. A Windows Phone and/or Tablet will be required to access the "cloud" information. It's probably a little early to say how their Office apps are going to intergrade, but you can bet there will be something available in that area.
So that covers the OSes - what else is out there and how does that apply for the Business IT?
Well, DropBox is quickly becoming one of the more popular sharing methods out there. It's easy, it's multi-platform and can be used application-free by going to any web browser. That's just storage. There's a whole host of other web-based applications out there that provide a variety of services for the working people of the world. SalesForce, WebEx, Citrix, American Express, Rackspace, just to name a few companies that have a web-based presence that employees traditionally need to build some sort of user-profile to access these services. These sites typically fall outside the realm of the traditional IT-based Directory structure of Active Directory or LDAP. An IT department doesn't manage any of these log-ins or profiles for these users.
I recently ran across a company called Symplified that actually provides cloud-based directory services. Nothing really earth shattering about that fact - Google also provides some level of LDAP interaction with their Google Docs for Business service. But what got me to thinking is that with all of these cloud initiatives by Apple, Google and Microsoft is that we are seeing the beginning of a seismic shift in the way IT is going to be done in the future.
No longer is the IT department going to manage their IT equipment within their firewalls where end-users will be granted login rights through their desk or laptop to the services they need. Their computer could be anything from a dumb terminal or a computer at home - all authenticating their access via a web-browser going into the services that are managed through these central logins. Sort of like agregating the business apps of the web into a new way of doing single-sign-on.
This also doesn't take into account the SaaS, IaaS and other various methods of offering an "as a Service" function. But IT departments really can no longer look at just their local infrastructure for what they manage. At the same time they also cannot just throw up their arms and say "we can't manage these cloud services". Ultimately it is going to get merged into one management solution.
Of course the question then becomes, where does a personal account end and a business account begin. But that is a topic for another rant. :)
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