Wouldn’t it be great to be able to login to any computer and be able to access all your music, pictures, documents, and passwords to all your social networking services? Well, soon (hopefully) you’ll be able to. This is the whole idea around cloud computing. IBM announced this week that they are partnering with Amazon as part of their initiatives to help expand their ongoing cloud computing project. What does this mean for you?
Well, have you ever used Google Docs to share a presentation with fellow members of a team? The way Google stores the files on it’s servers is essentially what IBM is putting into motion. IBM already has their initiative called Blue Cloud in the works now for over a year. This partnership is just another step in the process that is linking interested parties to help make this a reality for regular users and not just large corporations.
An entry on Wikpedia provides a nice explanation of the application of cloud computing:
“A cloud application leverages the Cloud in sofware architecture often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, thus alleviating the burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support.” Some examples are any social networking sites like Facebook or last.fm and any peer-to-peer networks. Uploading pictures could be done from any computer instead of having to worry about using your own personal machine. This would really help increase the adoption of web 2.0 and move us towards the possible endless opportunties for productivity and creativey of web 3.0.
Video that explains cloud computing (via YouTube)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0[/youtube]
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This is a very interesting article. I believe the product that is being supplied needs a strong security and privacy system attached to it. As software and technology advances, hackers do as well. This would give them a prime opportunity to get information from your computer that you want private. It is a great idea, but I would be unsure about involving myself with cloud computing.