The Rise of Cloud Computing

The term Cloud Computing may not instill the same sort of fear and dread that Skynet did in the Terminator films, but for some it might be getting close. The very words ‘Cloud Computing’ make it sound like some sort of extra terrestrial techno magic that’s floating around with the Noctilucent.

What ‘the cloud’ really is are lots of boring data centre’s all very much anchored to terra firma. It’s a good thing they are boring, because they need to be reliable (and we all know boring equals reliable. Ask any Volvo owner). After all, the promise of cloud computing is that it will eventually take over from our desk and laptop computers. All we’ll need to use it is a very basic device that can hook into ‘the cloud’ over a reliable and ever present Internet connection. If the stuff that your connection is connecting you to is a bit too exciting, it may be unreliable, and that just won’t do.

Amazon, Zoho and Microsoft, as well as many other large players are competing in the public cloud space. What I want to do here is to focus on just two of the newest big public cloud services competing to lock you in. Google’s Chrome OS and Apple iCloud.

Chrome OS

Google are a little bit exciting, but mostly reliable. They are also just about to release Chrome OS (not to be confused with Chrome the browser). Chrome OS is Google’s attempt to move us closer to the utopian dream of ‘the cloud’ doing all our computing for us. Of course, what Google want is for it to be their cloud that becomes the processor we all rely on. (Not unlike the way Microsoft Windows became the operating system we could all, erm, rely on.) Google want to become not only the operating system, but the computer. The access device will eventually be anything that can run their Linux based operating system. With Chrome OS you can only use the applications that Google provide. Admittedly, there are lots of third party applications that will be made available, but all controlled by Google.

As most of us know, Google made a vow not to be evil. I don’t think Microsoft ever made such a vow, so I’m sure we’re going to have a much better time of it with Google than we have with Microsoft. After all, Google have given us tons of great free stuff. For example, we’ve got Google Maps. These are fantastic, and we’d be lost without them. To enhance our mapping experience, we also have Google Streetview. This is where Google have photographed just about everything and everyone in the world and put the pictures on the Internet. Lucky we all agreed to that, otherwise there may have been some privacy issues.

Privacy (The erosion of)

That’s the real trade off with this free stuff. As great as it all is, we need to give up a bit of our privacy for it. Most of us don’t really care about that too much. All you have to do is look at the stuff people post on Facebook to realise that they are pretty damn comfortable with publicly announcing every intimate detail of their lives. Even the stuff that’s as exciting as the data centres it’s all being stored in.

As great as it all is, there is a line that needs to be drawn. I actually like Google (mostly) and think they provide some great services. The only real problem with Google’s cloud computing services (such as Google Docs) is privacy. Google make the vast bulk of their massive income from advertising. What they ask from us in return, for using these great gifts, is to just give up a bit of privacy. If you use Google Mail, you will notice that Google display adds (if you access it it via the Gmail interface in your browser). Google target these ads to you based on the content of your emails. Yup, that’s right, they’re reading your email. Well, their software is. This is the same for Google Docs. Whatever content you put on Google’s servers can be crawled by Google’s spiders so they can tailor ads, just for you. There is nothing inherently wrong with this as long as you are aware of it. If you know about it and are happy to use the service anyway, then happy days. Many people aren’t though. In fact, some people really don’t like it at all.

Apple iCloud

The main difference between iCloud and Chrome OS is that Apple already own the hardware and operating systems. In fact Apple’s latest OS, Lion, is designed specifically to integrate with iCloud and really hook Apple’s customer base.

Apple even have their own office suite; iWork. Interestingly, the name iCloud actually belonged to a different cloud computing company. But because Apple owns everything that starts with an ‘i’ they now have it. The other company now uses the snappy name ‘CloudMe’. (I bet that’s what they said when they got that first letter from Apple’s legal department.)

Where iCloud gets interesting is the way it really tries to lock Apple users into using the service. It does this by automatically synching data across all your Apple devices. This includes your iTunes library, photostream, ebooks and documents. They even exclude the disk space your music, photos, apps and books take up, and only count your own documents towards the 5Gig your free account comes with.

Apple already have MobileMe, which has been around for some time (and is no longer accepting new subscribers) and they recently launched a beta service called iwork.com. (iwork.com is a space where you can upload and share your iWork documents. The main problem with iwork.com is that it only works in Safari.)

Conclusion

What’s happening among the big players is a battle to lock-in their customer bases. People will need to choose which platform they want to use. Once you make a decision as to which camp you want to be in, it will be quite hard to move. This is because these services are dependent upon your OS and hardware.

At the moment it’s easy to try a few different cloud service because they mostly work with your web browser. What Google and Apple are doing is going much deeper than that by making the OS the defining element. It could be like going back to the VHS vs Beta days!