DionysusToast
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Seems most of you are talking about the personal applications of cloud computing. This isn't where all the money is. For the bigger picture - look at Salesforce.com.
Cloud computing is similar to the bureau services we had in the 70's where people would rent mainframe apps. It's hosting applications off site. Salesforece really got this going with their CRM software. Later they allowed other vendors to come in and develop apps on their platform and now there's a huge portfolio of business apps. I've been involved with sales management & healthcare apps on the salesforce platform. It's clunky as hell in my opinion.
Benefits are reduced infrastructure costs and being able to account for the costs of the application in a different way - application purchases are reported as fixed assets, application rentals aren't. Downside is lack of local customisations/flexibility. One oft discussed 'benefit' is that you can try for a few months first but any large organisation still needs to go through an implementation process to get an application up and that effectively ties them in anyway.
This stuff about keeping your files on a server somewhere is could computing but it's not where all the money is.
At some point, Microsoft will knock Salesforce.com off the top spot. The Microsoft platform is far superior to the Salesforce platform and I expect there will be a shift to MS because of this.
Cloud computing is similar to the bureau services we had in the 70's where people would rent mainframe apps. It's hosting applications off site. Salesforece really got this going with their CRM software. Later they allowed other vendors to come in and develop apps on their platform and now there's a huge portfolio of business apps. I've been involved with sales management & healthcare apps on the salesforce platform. It's clunky as hell in my opinion.
Benefits are reduced infrastructure costs and being able to account for the costs of the application in a different way - application purchases are reported as fixed assets, application rentals aren't. Downside is lack of local customisations/flexibility. One oft discussed 'benefit' is that you can try for a few months first but any large organisation still needs to go through an implementation process to get an application up and that effectively ties them in anyway.
This stuff about keeping your files on a server somewhere is could computing but it's not where all the money is.
At some point, Microsoft will knock Salesforce.com off the top spot. The Microsoft platform is far superior to the Salesforce platform and I expect there will be a shift to MS because of this.
