Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the next buzzword in the IT industry. While at a Conference in Florida in early September Nicholas Carr discussed could computing. Nicholas Carr wrote the book The Big Switch rewiring the world, From Edison to Google. His discussion was that computing is going to become a utility, much like how electric is. Back in the mid 1800’s factories produced their own electricity that changed in the late 1800’ and early 1900. By 1930, about 80 percent of companies abandoned producing their own electricity. They no longer had to maintain a staff or a department to produce electric. By using the utility, it saved them money and allowed them to focus on what they were good at.

His theory is computing is going to on the same route. If you look at what Google does with search engines and some of its online applications, it is already happening. The day could be coming were Google or Amazon give us a terminal to access the internet and we subscribe to the services we need.

His theory is that corporations are also going to go down this route someday. If you look at what some corporations are doing, they are already heading down this path. Spam filtering is outsourced to someone in the cloud. Salesforce.com and netsuite are already providing this service. Microsoft is also offering something in the cloud with its hosted services. Amazon has online storage it offers in the cloud.

I believe the day is coming were more services will be moved to the cloud. It could be like what happened with electric. Corporations will not maintain large IT staffs and will instead rely on the cloud to provide services to it.

This change will not happen overnight, but it is happening. Like most trends it could take years to start, but once it gains traction, the industry will move that direction very quickly.I think this trend will be interesting to watch.

Do I think this will happen in a few years, no? But I do think this is something that will be very common in 10