I remember when Gmail first hit beta back in 2004. It was invitation-only, and those with the invites were like gods among men for the first few months. Gradually, the invites got around and everyone who wanted an account got one. The experience was enthralling. Google's slick AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) interface was relatively new at the time, and blew Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail completely out of the water. Best of all, Google offered a jaw-dropping 1GB of online storage for free. To me, that was the moment web applications came of age.
Gmail was not the first web application of its kind, and it will most definitely not be the last. It serves as a good example of so-called "cloud computing." In my best regurgitation of the Wikipedia definition (coupled with my own impressions, of course), cloud computing is an approach to computing tasks that treats software as a service provided from a company's servers via the Internet (aka "The Cloud") to clients who access it using a Web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer. Some good contemporary examples include YouTube, Google Docs, Google Maps, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and other "Web 2.0" sites and services.
In most of these examples, you voluntarily store, edit, and manage data online using the web application. For instance, if I create a document on Google Docs for a project, it exists "in the Cloud" on Google's servers somewhere. I can edit it from any computer with a Web browser, give my friends permission to collaborate on it, and download or print the document for use in a more traditional desktop application like Word. Essentially, the Google Docs Web application provides all the editing capabilities of Microsoft Office without having to ever run Office itself.
Cloud computing has many obvious benefits. First, you never have to worry about backing up data stored in the Cloud. Some poor team of engineers in an ice-cold server farm has the responsibility to keep it alive and safe. Second, you are more flexible and mobile with your data. Internet access is everywhere, so cloud computing allows you to access your information in ways that are often unthinkable or extremely cumbersome from a traditional desktop approach. Finally, whenever a new "version" of a Web service comes out, it updates seamlessly in the Cloud - no user action required.
This approach is not without its drawbacks, as Apple realized very painfully with the recent rollout of MobileMe. Their successor to .Mac promised users the ability to effortlessly synchronize their calendar, e-mail, contacts, photos and other data across all their devices via the Cloud. The service was not ready when it launched, and in the first few weeks suffered many delays, server outages and other miscellaneous problems. Some users even lost all their e-mail during MobileMe's birth pangs. Apple discovered that getting a cloud computing infrastructure going can be a stormy process.
Despite these occasional hiccups, cloud computing is here for good and will continue to grow. As the Internet slowly becomes more ubiquitous, and devices (such as the iPhone) that allow us to get online with a fast connection from virtually anywhere become more common and affordable, cloud computing will play an ever-increasing role in our lives. Google recently introduced a new Web browser called Chrome that takes cloud computing one step further, providing desktop shortcuts to Web apps like Google Maps that allow them to launch and run virtually indistinguishable from a traditional application. As users get more and more used to this approach, the distinction between Cloud and desktop software will get very, very fuzzy.
Be the first to comment on this article!