Cloud–What it means to common man / end users?

Every single person who can talk little about IT is talking about cloud. Every other technical article on the web we read is about Cloud, directly or indirectly.

But, for an end user, is the cloud a new terminology to digest? Is it something they need to learn? Is it something they need to consider to make the right choice they make in their IT purchase or IT consumption?

The answer to all these fortunately is a NO. Although cloud as a “terminology” a recent development, but the implementation has been there for ever.

Do you ever remember Yahoo briefcase? Or have you not been using Web based free email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Gmail and likes of it? Have you not used RapidShare, to share large files with your friends or peers?

What are these……..?

These are nothing but “Services” available on the cloud for your consumption. Some are free, some are chargeable. But the purpose is the same. They provide you with a “facility” to do things without any / few changes / configurations on your local computer.

Think of a scenario of the distant past, when emails were for privileged ones (before Hotmail, Yahoo and net@address revolutionised the concept of “Email for all”). In this scenario, we would have bought / subscribed to an Internet Service provider, installed an email client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape (yes they too existed then) etc. Then we would configure this client to connect to the ISP’s email server and then start using the service.

Then came Hotmail, Yahoo, net@address, with a concept of – Nothing to be installed on the local machine. Everything happens on the internet. All you need is a web browser. (Free or not free is a different angle to this), So what we have here in this case, is an email service available for us to consume in the cloud. Plain and simple.

Thus before this concept started, everything was local. All software we consume to perform various of our day-to-day activities such as writing documents, creating spread sheets keeping a track of our accounts, checking and replying emails, running a particular Business application such as an Inventory Management system etc., were all local. Then came Web based email, which eliminated the need to installing an email client on our computer. Then came something like Yahoo Briefcase, that more or less reduced the need for us carrying floppy disk to carry files that needs to be accessed by us from two different computers.

Thus two of our activities were replaced by services on the internet and we didn’t need software to be installed on our computer to perform these activities.

So what has happened now that wasn’t there before?

For the past few years, what has changed is the fact that more (or almost all) applications that we use on a day to day basis for productivity or activities, are now available on the internet which means, each service we use on the web, we do not need to install that specific software on our local computer. For writing documents, word processing, maintaining a Spread sheet, software like Word, Excel are no longer the only available option. One could think of using Google docs or Office Live (complete office suite available on the web that can be consumed by just using a web browser).

World has progressed a lot on speed and availability of the internet. Hence even to listen to music, we do not need to install software such as Winamp, Media Player or Quicktime. We could listen to music available on the internet which can be streamed to a browser and provide the same experience.

For almost all the applications we use on a day-to-day basis we now have a choice of whether to install the relevant software locally on our computer or just use a browser to connect to an online version to achieve the same functionality.

The main reason for devices like netbooks, tablets and slate computers like iPad sell today is because we are in an era where most of the common tasks are achieved over the web and hence these devices can afford to be light and handy.

How far do we think this will go?

Well this is a difficult question to answer. As an hypothetical example, if we assume we consume 20 applications for performing our day to day activities, before the Hotmail, yahoo era, all 20 were essentially software that were to be installed locally on our computer. With Hotmail / Yahoo etc. we needed 1 less (emails were available on the web). Over the years the number has gone up to a great extent that we have almost 15-16 of them available on the web.

Are we saying we do not require any kind of software installed on our local computers?

The answer to this would depend upon two things – a) Is there a cloud equivalent of the software we use, and b) the level of our usage. We have to accept a fact here that the web cannot provide (at least as of today) all the richness in terms of user experience as well as functionality that the desktop equivalent provides. It is said that 20% of the functionalities provided by an application are used by 80% users and the remaining 80% of the functionality of that application by 20% users. Unless over the years if the cloud becomes even stronger or as strong as the desktop, the decision of selecting an application to be installed locally or do we use the application available over the internet depends up on the criteria of which category in the 20%-80% ratio, we fall under.

E,g, If you are a very heavy Spreadsheet user, then you would surely need to use Excel on your local computer since the web version (whether be it Google Docs or Microsoft Office Live) does not provide the complete richness that the desktop version provides. That said, may be in the near future, the web version would end up being as powerful as the desktop version, then the choice would be based on other factors such as cost etc..

On the contrary if you use a spreadsheet for the most common activities, the web version is a serious option one could think of since it not only provides a huge cost benefit, but also extra security of backups etc..

Thus in a nut shell, as an end user, we have far more options to choose from, for your productivity applications we use. It is no longer choice of software for your desktop but also option to go the web way.

Google is in the process of building an OS for the cloud called Chrome OS, which means we would not need anything installed on our computer other than a web browser. If it succeeds, everything will be in the cloud!! Possible?? – Time will tell!!!