During the past week while researching collaboration tools, especially trying to find negative reviews and experiences with Acrobat.com, it suddenly dawned on me!
It seems that Adobe were ahead of the posse when it came to forward thinking. In early 2008 when the beta version was released the term "cloud" was basically contained to those fluffy white things that we in Ireland tend to be very familiar with.
Cloud technology is still in its infancy but growing, even those most people who have no idea what cloud technology is will be experiencing it without realising it.
Acrobat.com not only offers the ConnectNow online meeting room tool, but also the text document and presentation file creation capabilities. so far you can only create ( in a basic way) text files, presentations and spreadsheets. You then save them on acrobat.com, share them and collaborate allowing users to edit and save the same document. In essence this is cloud technology.
In the future, it will be commonplace that employees in companies and institutions will no longer require software and applications to be installed on their computer. Instead all of the applications will be stored in a virtual environment ( the cloud) and users will then access online the application they require, use it and store their files to share and edit.
The likes of Joomla and Drupal for example could be considered a form of cloud technology, as no software is required on your computer to create and maintain a powerful website with little web development knowledge required. Everything is stored online. All editing tools, publishing ability etc are available within the online environment. You can also assign different levels of Admin to give others certain editing rights.
No need to buy a 10 Gizillion Terrabyte iPod. You simply connect to your online store and play your music.
Once, and it will happen, that high speed wireless internet access has 100% coverage and will be totally free ( As it was originally intended, by the way), then you will start to see this online collaboration world become the standard.
It could also become the standard that computers are given away free and you pay for the access and subscriptions to the Cloud technologies.
You thinks thats mad?
Did you ever think that mobile phone companies would give away their phones? They are still making money you know!
It would also drastically reduce piracy.
It does sound unlikely at first, but your mobile phone analogy is a really good one. Bring it on, I say! When do you think it will come to pass, Darren?
ReplyDeleteTo think, back in 1998 my English teacher maintained that the IT industry would flatline by 2000 because people "didn't need anything better than Windows 1998 and a sturdy desktop PC"...
In 1999, the CEO of VERITAS Software (now merged into Symantec) chatted with the customer training group (my group). His comment was that 'the genie was out of the bottle and was not going back in'. He was referring to the explosion of data we were starting to see then.
ReplyDeleteHe had remarkable vision.
One of the companies creating the software which powers the 'cloud' is Citrix. They have a huge office in Dublin and have the product and vision to go places, IMHO.