It certainly isn’t news to anyone who has followed the software industry that there are many big changes in the works. We’ve seen articles in the past few years proclaiming the death of the desktop operating system, the desktop machine itself, and now the very concept of “owning” software or even the data we produce using computers and applications. Welcome back to the world as it was before inexpensive microcomputers, memory and digital storage put a computer full of productive applications within the reach of everyone.
Welcome to the virtual world of clouds, where your computer is only a conceptual image, the applications you use are transparent and your data is available everywhere, on every communications device you use.
Wait a minute! What did I mean by “Welcome back…”? Consider, before we had computing power on our own desktops, we had “dumb terminals.” These were just keyboards and monitors connected by modem interfaces to mainframes. They had no local applications, data or control. Sure, the machines we use today have no relationship to those primitive devices. We have more computing power in the dumbest cell phone than we did in a terminal. But, the relationship we’ve known for the past thirty years is ending. We don’t need to have a desktop computer to tap into rich communications, media or applications. We can do it with our cell phone, a netbook, a notepad – cheap, light, mobile devices that are little more than smart communication and display machines. We don’t need gigabytes of storage – we can get it cheaply on a monthly basis and access it from any device, anywhere, anytime.
All of this has moved from so many directions and so fast we’ve barely noticed. We went from cell phones to smart phones, from analog TVs with over the air receivers to digital signals on cable and from dial-up modems to broadband almost simultaneously. We now have social media, virtual communities and friends around the world we can talk to and see anytime. What has brought us this sea change? Fast, reliable communication networks, vast computing resources and a view of the world outside our doors at a price that is within reach of more people than ever before.
Article comments
1 - Fitz
Great article. You make some really solid points. I think, as you said, there's serious opportunity out there for folks who "get it" to capitalize on the Cloud. Netbooks and mobile devices are more and more prevalent every day, so I think it's inevitable. I worry about all the security concerns and cyberterrorism with all this data floating around out there - somewhere. But it's already happening, so I suppose I should just get used to it. :)