Everyone loves clouds these days in corporate computing, and the concept will be a big part of the buzz at the CeBIT information-technology trade fair in Germany March 2-6.
Tasks that we used to do with a desktop computer are often being shifted into the “cloud,” meaning that some nameless computer, often on another continent, is helping do the job or save the data.
“It’s not just big companies like Microsoft and IBM that are going in for this. Quite small companies will be showing cloud products at CeBIT,” said trade fair spokesman, Hartwig von Sass.
Cloud computing could equally well be described as digital outsourcing.
In cloud set-ups, distant servers provide data storage, the software to do the job, and sometimes even the operating system. Armed with a fast Internet connection and a basic computer or smartphone, the user gets access to all those resources.
The idea is not new.
Holger Bleich, a writer with the German magazine c’t, thinks the sudden omnipresence of the term is a bit of marketing fluff.
People who use Hotmail accounts have been doing cloud computing for more than a decade. The emails are on a Microsoft server and can be accessed from any Internet-connected computer. Putting photos on Flickr or posting to Facebook is also cloud computing.
Google Apps is a free set of office programs, all accessed via a web browser so that a user can do without their own spreadsheet software, for example. Microsoft is bringing out a similar cloud product that will be free for private users: Office Web Apps 2010.
“Three to four years from now, the bulk of applications will run via the web,” forecasts Carlo Velten of the Experton Group market analysis firm in suburban Munich. What is more, demand is growing for private data backups, and many people are willing to pay for…