We've all seen technologies that get overhyped -- built up beyond the reality of their impact. Some have argued that Facebook was overhyped, hence the reason for its current stock troubles. Inversely, others argue that Facebook has become so embedded in our lives that it is still underestimated compared to its long-term impact. I've often been asked if the Cloud is heading down the same path, and whether we think Cloud technology is overhyped. After all, the buzz around industry giants like Apple's iCloud and Google Drive entering the Cloud market is loud, and that feels risky to some.
To set the stage let me first define what the Cloud is. The Cloud is a relatively new term for what we have been doing increasingly since the invention of the Web -- using Internet technologies to do things (such as run applications or store data) that we previously did locally on our PCs. Companies such as SugarSync and Dropbox are providing tools that accelerate this shift through technology that more easily lets you use the Cloud in your daily life. And now that large players such as Google, Apple and Microsoft are entering the fray and imitating the innovators, there is more discussion about whether the Cloud is reaching the height of the hype cycle.
However, the power the Cloud brings to our daily life is actually quite understated. Yes, the excitement is great -- but the reality is even greater. What we are seeing is the intersection and synergy of societal trends magnified by technological forces that, in a virtuous cycle, enhance those societal trends.
• Mobility -- One of the most important of those trends is mobility. Business is more global. Families are increasingly scattered around the planet. We are increasingly on the move visiting customers, factories and families. Yet, we still need to get work done as if we are in our traditional offices, and we want to stay in touch with our loved ones at home while visiting the ones far away. The Cloud keeps us connected. Collaborating on sets of documents when on the road, sending large but critical files via Web links and automatically uploading photos and videos from our devices -- the Cloud keeps us productive and in-touch while on the road. The Cloud helps achieve the true potential of today's smartphones and tablets, and as a result, makes us all more productive on the go.
• Blending of Work and Personal Lives -- The second key trend is the intermingling of our work and personal lives. It's difficult to remember a time when leaving the office meant leaving your work behind for the day. Working on a key project into the evening from home, continuing to collaborate with coworkers, being available for calls with colleagues in different time zones -- that is now the norm. Similarly, checking into email or a file notification on our mobile devices while away from the office at a child's soccer game is part of our new lifestyle. While we may feel at times that work is intruding into our personal time, the fact that we can be professionally productive from anywhere, anytime, allows us to be more available to our families and friends. The soccer game cannot move its time and place to fit my work schedule, but the Cloud allows me to do my work anytime and anywhere. While the energy of interfacing together in the office is important to many organizations (including SugarSync), it's a relief knowing that, at any given moment on any given project, there is almost nothing I cannot do offsite as long as I have access to my information via the Cloud.
• The Rise of the Virtual Company -- The third trend driving the Cloud is the rise of small business and growth of "virtual" companies. One of the great things about the Cloud is that, for the price of an office lunch, a small business can have access to collaboration, mobile access and backup up technologies that previously only large corporations with IT departments could manage and afford. Just as Web mail replaced the need for an on-premise Exchange server, technologies such as SugarSync allow a business person to have all the benefits of Sharepoint, FTP, online backup and more for as little as $5 a month. The effectiveness of Cloud collaboration makes it easy for consultants and other professionals to band together in virtual firms. For example, one SugarSync customer -- a translation company -- has interpreters in over a dozen countries collaborating on projects and acting as a unified organization leveraging real-time Cloud synchronization and collaboration.
All three of these trends are clearly self-reinforcing. Our ever-increasing mobility drives the demand for the Cloud, while the Cloud allows us to be more productive while mobile. Our work and personal lives are blending, and the Cloud helps us manage this new paradigm by enabling us to work from anywhere, and on any schedule. Cloud technologies allow small businesses to be more efficient and grow, just as the small businesses that are leading our country's growth are driving growth in Cloud.
When a technology gets tied up inextricably in powerful trends like this, that technology becomes core to our lives. And when a technology embeds itself in our lives, it thus achieves both staying power and profit potential. So even with the increased attention that Cloud technology has received this year, the impact that the Cloud currently has on our lives -- and the impact it will have as adoption continues to skyrocket -- is still considerably under-hyped.
Given the important role of the Cloud in our daily lives, the selection of a Cloud service is of critical importance. Features and performance are table stakes. As users, we need to consider the providers' track record on security and cross-platform availability. Is providing an excellent Cloud service the focus of the company, or is it simply a means to some other business ends?
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Cloud technology is definitely going to continue growing to improve access and to cut costs which is pretty obvious. FaceBook has been very very successful and will continue as well. I really dont know where this notion of FaceBook going away is coming from. The cloud and FaceBook are unrelated and will both grow and thrive. -Thank you.
The cloud is a medium, not a product.
A key factor in how far we all go with cloud is network bandwidth and latency. For more complex workloads with demanding performance requirements and higher mission criticality, high bandwidth and low latency make accessing the cloud via the Internet unacceptable. Once you get into the realm of dedicated telecomm and single-tenant infrastructure, such "private" clouds look a lot like conventional hosting arrangements.
Technology passes through cycles and right now due to infrastructure costs small and mid size companies see the Cloud as away of eliminating upfront technology costs and redirecting these funds to their core business. In another 5-7 years there will be another tech that will change the game and it will look similar to a past methodology.
Today, 80% of our workers work at home, productivity is up 18%; and I've saved tens of thousands in overhead so far in 2012. We'd NEVER go back to hosting our own data. The cloud has revolutionized our business and the way we serve our clients.
Getting past that, my point is that the question is moot. The Cloud is infrastructure, the web sites and services that occupy it, content. The Cloud is hot now because it is expanding energetically into the marketplace, and as it becomes ubiquitous it will fade into the background the way we do not notice the huge TV screen that displays the highway billboard.
Cloud Computing is what I call the resurrection of thin client, because the original operating paradigm of user-oriented computing was having multiple dumb terminals to a common mainframe. (In reality, since the client devices in question (smart phones, tablets, and such) are powerful computers in themselves maybe I should call Cloud Computing "chubby client" computing). The thing is that The Cloud is as related to Facebook as the computers its being run on.
The Cloud will prosper as an infrastructure, not replacing local computing and processing power, but enhancing it. Cloud Computing is device, software, and user agnostic, and the concept itself is not IP protected. Of course Cloud Computing will prosper. The Cloud will return investment to those who use it, as any tool will, depending on how well it is used (or not).
Thanks for reading and commenting. I'd like to clarify a couple of points.
The analogy I was drawing between Facebook and the Cloud was not to say that they are the same thing - of course they are not - but rather to ask if they are being similarly over-hyped in the market. One could argue that in the excitement about Facebook's success that it was over-hyped leading to the current issues, particularly regarding the stock. I posed the question whether the Cloud is being similarly over-hyped. My answer is that, due to the trends I describe and the role Cloud can play in our lives, in fact, the Cloud today is under-hyped.
You make the point that the Cloud will grow to the point where it will become ubiquitous and as such fade into the background. I agree that there is a high likelihood of this. In my view, however, this does not lessen but rather increases its importance. Just as while we take electricity for granted, it is of critical importance.
Due to the power, cost and excellent user experience of local computing on all sorts of devices, I agree that the Cloud will be complimentary to local computing. In fact, this belief is the underpinning for why I believe Sync is the critical technology to enable Cloud. Sync-based solutions, like SugarSync, give users the access, security and availability of Cloud with the power and experience of local.
Your data, and the ability to access it are under the control of a physical machine somewhere controlled by a company run by profit minded people, and if anything happens you are screwed. They can be hacked, hit by lightning, earth quaked, or just sold out. Or like Facebook, they can someday simply change their privacy policy and sell your information to the highest bidder.
This bothers me.
My little company will not be operating in any clouds anytime soon.
How do you think Facebook makes
i honestly find it funny people buy into this stuff -- because everyone knows how tight internet security is -- nobody has ever lost data on millions of people at a time, ever.
More importantly why pay 200. for something when you can pay Apple 40. a month, for the rest of your life?
i am not going to argue with you that we are losing meaningful communication, its just blaming gadgets for something that has been going on for decades isn't exactly accurate. people go to college to learn a language of bs so they sound all businessy like. tv, suburbanization and air conditioning probably play a bigger part in our de-evolution than smart phones -- we like being homogonized, polarized, catatonic -- we are masochistic like that.
Then again Gabriel Garcia Lorca fled Spain and moved to NYC for a little bit in WW2 -- his poetry changed to themes of isolation and lonliness. He went back to Spain and was killed. We don't even need the smart phones, and tv, we do it to ourselves.