Cloud computing a ray of sunshine on Google horizon?

Stan Beer
Sunday, 30 March 2008 13:45

Opinion and Analysis

Simplifying things somewhat, desktop computing is to cloud computing what silver oxide film was to digital photography. As was the case with digital photography until high megapixel cameras became affordable, the only thing holding back cloud computing until now has been lack of Internet bandwidth. The advent of cheap and fast broadband has largely solved that problem.

And what of the new generation of cloud computing providers other than Google? Aside from major rivals like Yahoo! and increasingly Amazon, smaller new players are springing up all over the place. There are SaaS companies playing in the office productivity space such as Zoho and Think Free. There are companies that aim to simulate the Windows desktop such as Desktop Two. However, none of the smaller companies have the infrastructure or clout of Google or its larger rivals. Uptime guarantees and scalability are issues which present significant barriers to entry.

The desktop is previous generation technology and therefore doesn't sit well with the current generation of Web applications. After 14 years of Internet, interfacing the desktop with the Web is still clumsy because the Web makes the desktop redundant. The fact is, with many if not most users, the desktop is really just a habit. Businesses are still using it, teachers are still teaching it and students are still studying it but as computing becomes ever more portable and Internet connectivity ever more ubiquitous the desktop will eventually disappear behind a cloud.