What is Cloud Computing?

PC Mag
by John Brandon
06.23.08



Everyone's talking about cloud computing. But what is it, who's competing for it, and what will it mean for everyday users?

Cloud computing is set to take over the world, or at least possibly replace Microsoft Outlook. The cloud concept is simple: It's a way to access your data and apps from anywhere, via the Internet (or "the cloud"). Yet everyone from Gartner Group to Google has a slightly different take on cloud computing: It can be anything from storing and sharing documents on Google Docs to running your entire company operations using a remote, third-party data center. Some envision it as a way to compute without operating systems, or pesky local client programs, and with minimal hardware needs (just a basic client machine).

"The most important single characteristic of a cloud is abstraction of the hardware from the service," says John Willis, a noted cloud-computing expert and blogger, explaining that the location of the servers is not as important as easy access to the data. "However you define it, I think cloud technology will have a footprint in every business that does IT within the next five years."

The particular type of cloud computing that the business world could take advantage of requires massive server cluster farms and superfast network bandwidth. It also requires that companies be ready to hand over their data to a third party. A few small companies, among them Zoho.com (which offers business apps, such as word processing and task lists) and Box.net (which supplies online file storage) have established themselves as SaaS (software as a service) providers, with varying degrees of success. But SaaS is primarily a race between Google and Microsoft to provide advertiser-supported cloud applications to customers.

Security is one critical issue that both companies must address. Depending on the SaaS provider, data can be encrypted from point to point, and since services are Web-based, they're very easy to patch. Google, for example, can respond to a new security threat without customers even being aware of the problem — or the fix. But end users essentially would have to entrust their data to an outside entity, which is a big leap of faith. Dave Girouard, a VP and general manager at Google, says that the company is working to allay the fears that make trust difficult to achieve.

"Google is investing enormous amounts of capital and sweat equity to ensure that we can protect your data better than you can do yourself," he says. "Cloud computing will be additive. Usage patterns will change, and users will look primarily to the cloud for most of the things they turn to their PCs for today."

Yet others aren't as optimistic about cloud computing. Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett cautions that it's not quite ready for prime time. He says that the framework is in an early phase of development—it's almost experimental, rather than a reliable and trusted computing paradigm, .

Ironically, even though Google is battling to dominate the cloud, some of its apps, such as Google Earth, still cache a tremendous amount of data locally to speed up operations. Add to that the privacy, network bandwidth, and political hurdles yet to address, and it looks as if cloud computing will have to drop down to earth a bit more before it can enjoy widespread adoption by both consumers and businesses.

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