In this month's WIRED magazine,
there is an article about cloud computing - like all good ideas it starts with
one man who is just simply so pissed off with another, that he wants to beat him up with a club (or hard drive, you pick)! In this case, the angry man is Larry Ellison {the man
behind Oracle} and the person he is angry at is Bill Gates {the man behind
Windows 95, the reason Ellison is angry!}. Out of this rage, came a
"vision for Oracle that would neutralize Microsoft’s main advantage: the
dominance of its operating system. They imagined a simple machine that would
eschew software installed on a hard drive in favor of accessing applications
online. Data — videos, documents, pictures — would be stored in Oracle databases
instead of on the computer itself."
What a
brilliant idea! Except it wasn't Oracle that finally did it - it was Google!
Merely 2 years after Ellison and his brilliant vision, two young Stanford
graduates set up a company that would redefine computing forever!
But cloud
computing is older than Google or Oracle. John McCarthy as early as
1960 suggested that "computation may someday be organized as a public
utility". In 1999, Loudcloud, founded by Marc Andreessen, was one of the
first to attempt to commercialize cloud computing. {see the Wikipedia
entry on cloud
computing}. Amazon and IBM's work on significant technologies for data
services led to many of the revolutions in cloud computing. Macromedia (before
they moved to Adobe), AutoDesk, and Dassault Systems have all tried out various
trials to move thinner versions of their software to the cloud. But in the end,
it was Google with their Docs, infinite storage, and near free digital
connection tools that made cloud computing truly accessible to everyone.
This year, with their announcement of the Chrome OS, Google is redefining the way we access and store our information forever. Cloud computing is here to stay - now if only everyone could just catch up!
I enjoyed your article Anijo. Dassault Systèmes is really just warming up with its cloud offer, so watch our space for more to come. What I think will be interesting for designers is the accesibility the cloud should bring small to medium design shops to software and heterogeneous project teams. Best, Kate
Posted by: Kate | January 11, 2010 at 03:33 AM