Cloud computing
Unless you’ve been living in the deepest, darkest unconnected part of the Amazon rain forest for the past year, you’re likely to have come across the term "cloud computing". It is the next big thing. So much so that at the most recent Gartner conference in Cape Town cloud computing dominated the proceedings. And Microsoft is now planning a "cloud" version of its operating system in the coming months.
Interestingly, cloud computing is still some way off for most enterprise-sized corporations – Gartner’s natural market – but for the average consumer, cloud computing is very real.
First off, what is cloud computing? The simplest definition is the one in which data and applications are served to users over the Internet. Users no longer need applications such as Outlook on their desktop, but instead use versions of these, or other applications, through a web browser. Data is, similarly, stored centrally and served up to users as and when they need it and on any platform they choose.
The benefits are obvious. Instead of having an email client – and all my email – on one computer stuck to my desk I can take that email with me, on my mobile phone. And when my PC hard disk dies I simply replace it and carry on as before with little or no interruption. The downside, of course, is that I have to trust that whoever has my data is not about to close down and that they treat my information with respect.
Getting started
For consumers, getting started in the consumer cloud is pretty straightforward. The obvious starting point is email, and there Google’s GMail is the standout. Sign up for a GMail account, make that your primary email account. GMail does both POP3 and IMAP email. What you want to do is go for the IMAP option which means that you can have a primary email client on your desktop but when you leave that, all your email is still available to you from any other machine or on your phone.
The next thing to look at is your calendar and documents. Again Google has pretty good tools for both of these. On the calendar front Google Calendar is more than adequate. It allows you to set up multiple calendars and share those with friends, family and colleagues. Personally I use GooSync as well as Google Calendar which synchronises my calendar between the Internet and mobile phone. The free version doesn’t support multiple calendars but it does a good job of keeping a primary calendar in line.
When it comes to creating and editing documents Google’s Docs is usable but I find that a better solution is a Dropbox account. Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) is hands-down the most impressive tool for keeping folders of documents in sync across multiple computers.
In its free form Dropbox gives users 2GB of storage space on their servers. That space can be accessed using a browser when on the road, but the real power of DropBox is its desktop client. The client software is free and runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Installed, it creates a DropBox folder on your drive. The DropBox client watches that folder and synchronises any changes made with its servers. The synchronisation is almost immediate and all changes are available from any Internet-connected PC or mobile phone.
These are just a handful of the cloud options available to users today, and you can expect a great deal more in the coming year. Particularly as Google has launched its Chrome browser which is essentially a platform for running its online applications.
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