Where is your data stored?
By Conrad Walters | theage.com.au | 10 October
We've all had our head in the clouds at some point but increasingly our data is taking up residence there as well. In a major trend known as "cloud computing", the internet is becoming the repository for files and even software.
Cloud computing may sound unfamiliar but many people use it without even thinking about it. The most obvious examples are email services such as Hotmail or Gmail. Messages and the underlying software exist in the ether of "the cloud" rather than on your hard drive, as was usually the case a few years ago.
Of course, we're only talking about a conceptual cloud here. All your data is in reality sitting on a storage server ... somewhere.
As broadband proliferates and more people are permanently connected to the web, cloud computing opens possibilities.
"We're really at the start of what is a major shift," says Alan Noble, Google Australia's engineering director. Google, Microsoft, Apple and plenty of others, big and small, are investing in cloud computing and consumers are warming to the idea. At its core, it has three big benefits.
First, there's the convenience. As long as you have access to a computer that connects to the internet, you have access to your files.
Want to show your colleagues a picture of your bungy leap from a New Zealand bridge? If the image is stored in the cloud instead of your PC's hard drive, you merely log in to view it through a service such as Flickr, Picasa or Snapfish.
Secondly, there's the advantage of never worrying about whether you have the latest, greatest version of your software. When a program needs a security patch or an enhancement is available, the changes are made on the web servers we think of as the cloud and everyone instantly benefits.
Thirdly, there's more opportunity for collaboration, meaning people can not only see the work of others but simultaneously edit the same files. The consensus is that we have only begun to appreciate the possibilities of this but plenty of examples already exist.
Try this: imagine you are having a barbecue and asking people to bring a plate.
You could invite 10guests by email and then spend days negotiating who brings sausages and who brings salad. But with cloud computing, you can simply post the guest list to the cloud and ask your friends to each nominate a dish next to their name.
Calling up the list, each guest sees a menu, so there are no double-ups and you can concentrate on being host, not a secretary. Similar systems organise car pools and football practice schedules.
In the US, some pet owners upload daily reports about the insulin levels of their cats so a veterinarian can monitor the animals' health. At least one cigarette smoker has posted daily reports on his efforts to quit, believing public accountability would help him kick the habit.
A Google product manager for cloud computing, Jonathan Rochelle, maintains sharingdocs.blogspot.com simply to report on clever uses of cloud computing spreadsheets. Among them are spreadsheets devoted to poetry, sport, knitting and beer drinking.
Cloud computing options abound for word processing, long a stalwart of desktop programs. Apart from spreadsheets, Google's suite of applications, collectively known as Google Apps, includes presentation software to compete with PowerPoint and a word processor that facilitates collaboration while still retaining overall control. There is also an offline version that synchronises your files when you're back online.
Microsoft, too, is active in cloud computing, says Harvey Sanchez, who heads the company's Windows Live program in Australia.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint are dominant forces in office software for the desktop but the company has made an advertising-sponsored version, Microsoft Works, available free online.
As for the company's flagship Microsoft Office suite, MrSanchez says the emphasis there is on extending its power when users are online but maintaining full use even when they aren't.
"If you put everything on the cloud, unless you are connected, you won't be able to get access and you won't have any productivity," MrSanchez says.
Microsoft is using cloud computing to overcome the problem of how to synchronise information across devices. If you can spare a moment, think how much time you spend synchronising all your labour-saving devices.
The PC at work has irreplaceable spreadsheets; the home PC bulges with family photos; perhaps there's a notebook, too, caught in the no-man's land as you commute.
Then there's your smartphone with every essential contact and a personal digital assistant with reminders for the next six months.
No matter where you are, what you want at any given moment is somewhere else. Microsoft's answer, Live Mesh, is a way to connect devices and to make data on one device available on every device.
Meanwhile, Apple has centred its cloud computing efforts on a service called MobileMe, which promises to keep an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac and PC synchronised. Email, contacts and calendar information are all kept on the cloud and synchronised with the devices when they're online.
And Yahoo!, Intel and Hewlett Packard have teamed up to explore the possibilities of cloud computing. But even small companies are making a name for themselves.
Twitter, for example, is a cloud computing application that has made headlines with a service that sends SMSs to communities of users. In Australia, rememberthemilk.com.au applies cloud computing technology to send reminders and manage tasks through Gmail, Twitter, a BlackBerry, Google calendar, an iPhone or an iPod touch.
All this connectivity, though, is not without controversy.
Google's decision to let computers scan emails so that relevant ads could be displayed in Gmail prompted widespread nervousness about privacy. (For now, Google has forgone advertising revenue in its calendar and office suite.)
The adoption of cloud computing also has been stymied by a reluctance to surrender ownership of personal files to the cloud.
In trying to address this, Google chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, has made an analogy with banks, arguing "fundamentally, it's better to keep your money in the bank than in your pocket".
Similarly, he says personal information is better off protected by the regimes of an IT company than left to the lackadaisical attitude most of us have when it comes to backing up our files.
Originally published October 2, 2008
First published by TheAge.com.au on October 10 2008
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