For the past two months, my wife and I have been slaving away with a remodeling project at home. We have taken on the project of converting our upstairs loft to a new bedroom, a "pre-teen" suite for our twin daughters twelfth birthday. To save money we decided to do some of the work ourselves. Just this past week I decided I was really tired of the never-ending project, so I took a day off and worked fifteen hours to complete it. The next day I was talking with my daughter and she asked me what my favorite thing to do was. I told her to spend time with my family. She quickly commented, "You haven't been able to do that lately". Wow! That hit hard. So I began to contemplate the time I spent in the remodeling project and discovered five related reasons I love the concept of "Cloud Computing".
In the remodeling project I discovered:
- Time - I underestimated the value of my time to my family.
- Quality - I am not as good a painter, carpenter, or electrician as I thought I was.
- Efficiency - It takes me ten times longer to do the work of a professional.
- Stress - I become more stressed and agitated when I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
- Productivity - I concentrated more on the project and less on family and work.
Similar to Web 2.0 in 2007, cloud computing will definitely be the top tech buzz word for 2008 .
According to Wikipedia, Cloud computing literally means Internet ('Cloud') based development and use of computer technology ('Computing'). It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using Internet technologies to multiple external customers. It allows users to access technology-enabled services without knowledge of, expertise with, nor control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.
I simply define the cloud computing concept as a hosted internet based solution to access your applications and data from anywhere, at any time, from almost any device in which I don't have to administer backups, updates or infrastructure.
Since 2001, I have been utilizing the concept of cloud computing via hosted applications and servers. Of course, the term was not used then and some may argue hosted application providers are not technically defined as cloud computing. I'm not going to argue this point, the simple fact of the matter is the cloud computing concept has become a solid business technology strategy for my firm. From my core business applications to my telephony solution. Every decision I make with technology involves the concept of cloud computing.
So how does my need for cloud computing relate to my remodeling project?
- Time - My time is more valuable working with my clients.
- Quality - No matter how much technology I know, tech professionals will know more.
- Efficiency - It takes me ten times longer to do the work of a tech professional.
- Stress - I don't need anymore stress in my life. Redundancy and backup procedures are built-in.
- Productivity - Allows flexibility on how, when, and where I work.
Here are a list of some of the services and applications I currently use that I consider are cloud computing proofs of concept. Although not all fit the technical definition of cloud computing, they all fit my definition of being able to access anytime from the web from multiple devices.
- Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite - Web Builder CS, NetClient CS and Virtual Office CS
- RIA Checkpoint - Research library
- McAfee - hybrid hosted enterprise anti-virus solution
- trixbox - hybrid hosted telephony solution
- Symantec Hosted Mail Security - anti-spam and anti-virus email solution
- OpenDNS - network security and web filtering solution
- Sugarsync - file syncing solution
- Maxemail - Internet faxing solution
- Typepad - blogging solution
Also, check out one of my favorite blogs at jkOnTheRun and see how Kevin Tofel is challenging himself to operate in a complete cloud computing environment. The last I checked 99% of his computing was being done in the cloud. The original post can be found at http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/06/im-taking-the-w.html.
