Whitespace: The cloudy (but bright) future of productivity

Issue 39: July 2008

Forget the Beijing Olympics, 2008 may well become known as the year 'cloud computing' went from zero to hero. The concept describes the existence of files, programs and applications that reside 'in the clouds', i.e. the Internet, rather than on PCs or within a firm's computer room.

Remaining in sync

Lots of us have lots of email accounts: work, home, smart phone, perhaps even an online Gmail or Yahoo! account… a plethora of contact points that can make it difficult to remember which messages have been read or the location of important attachments.
Alleviating this multi-mailbox problem is one of the great hopes of cloud computing. To help users better organise their communications, a master version of all email, address book and calendar information is stored in a user's 'cloud' and synchronised across their various computers.

Microsoft Exchange has been providing synchronisation and back-up capabilities for some time. However, cloud computing is currently attracting considerable attention with Apple's mobileme. Designed around the new iPhone G3 and costing US$99 a year, the service has the potential to put cloud computing in the pockets of SME employees across the globe.

On the same page

Another key advantage of working from a cloud is virtual collaboration. A growing number of online business productivity programs are enabling colleagues to work on the same document using any computer or smart phone, a blessing for people who live in meetings.

Google is one of the key innovators in this area. In a direct assault on Microsoft Office, the company's Google Docs features word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs that exist solely on the internet to better facilitate collaboration. And unlike Office, the program suite doesn't need to be licensed, installed or updated.
IT industry commentators are confident programs like Google Docs and mobileme are signs of things to come. In fact, it's suggested the proliferation of online programs will soon enable SMEs to outsource IT and access the same enterprise-class technology as multi-million dollar companies.

The forecast for online IT

Is all this simply too good to be true?
It must be said cloud computing still has a few hurdles to overcome. Firstly, there are a lot of bugs to be ironed out before it could be described as seamless. (As you read this, Apple's mobileme is experiencing barrage of criticism for failing to work as promised.)

And, of course, there's the question of security. According to collaboration researcher Professor Bruce Sutton, the integrity of cloud computing encryption isn't the major problem… its users are – an issue he suggests is best addressed through employee training.

These concerns aside, one thing is certain, cloud computing is receiving a massive push from the IT industry's heavy hitters, including Yahoo!, Microsoft and IBM. The forecast is for a cloud filled future; and when you consider how much information today's breed of mobile knowledge worker has to cope with, it's easy to see why.

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