If any of your office suites ditch you or find it expensive to buy, what do you do? Head to Google Docs. You start making your docs, ppt's and excel sheets – just with a computer and Internet connectivity, anytime and anywhere. Free. This is cloud computing in today's technical parlance. A technology that offers to carry out your daily work, business, using “online software” with any computer via the Internet from any part of the world. There is no need to install any software on computers. Cloud computing is a net of various services used just like internet services but the mode of application and implementation is different then normal internet services. Any online software, for example Google docs, Flickr and others have a back-end networks of services divided into various small independent functions which are installed on various different computers and network. The joining of these services virtually, gives us final product to work on, hence it's called “Cloud Computing.” The application is literally floating in the network, which needs no installation on your computer. Everything works remotely. To work on these types of applications only three things are required – any computer, Internet access and log in details. The actual seed of this technology was planted in late 2004, which gave people a new wave of innovation – unnamed and unknown. One could use “online applications” for their daily use without the need to install the applications on computers with a Internet connection. The ability to write/share, upload data to store or share in the form of pictures/videos, communication tools and business tools: The prime examples which started the wave are some applications are still consistent or taken over by other companies to add in more features. 1) Due to technologies like Jotlive, Ajaxwrite,Think Office and Writely, which is now Google Docs, it's easier to make docs, ppt's and excel sheets online anytime, anywhere. 2) Google Calendar, which has made schedulers and diaries obsolete, but if there was no www.rememberthemilk.com and www.meetwithapproval.com this idea would have never seen the light of the day. 3) For uploading and sharing photos and to network Flickr, Facebook, www.textamerica.com started the fire. Text America fizzled out, while Flickr and Facebook are getting stronger as technologies open new doors. This enabled people without any knowledge of photo editing to edit pictures on internet without any complexities incorporated in photosharing websites. 4) Today, You Tube has revolutionized the way video is seen and shared on internet after “video egg” down its shutters. 5) People depend on “Drop Box” to store and send files, but www.yousendit.com and www.dropsend.com are still in the race. Vision is the same, ways to apply and use it, is different. As the above tools got people interested, this technology started giving birth to a whole new era of advanced ‘Cloud Computing”. As the technology bettered with more tools emerging in market – possibilities increased by faster internet speeds, more awareness, know-how of deploying these tools on cloud increased, more companies took initiatives in shifting their applications virtually and started using them for accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, invoicing, human resource management, content management thus making this technology indispensable to humans. 8 out of 10 people would sweat at the thought of using an online copy of their basic favorite word processing software. Having said this, any person or any business has to be a little receptive in adapting to the “to the cloud,” obviously depending on the needs and demand/supply sector. Since installing and managing heavy applications eat up computer resources as well as company resources, cloud computing could be an option worth considering which opens up a world of opportunities. Managing your daily work or business with any computer, internet access and login details could be a way to float in the clouds with Cloud Computing. BM
