So cloud, what's the future?

Blog author: Sean McDonald (Former ICONZ CEO)

The Future of Cloud Computing, what say you?

With time on my hands over the weekend (a rare thing with teenage boys) I very strangely found myself pondering the future of cloud computing. Now before I recieve your mocking tones, I was actually preparing for an article I had been asked to write by a local print publication of some repute so I needed to put my foot down and come up with the goods. Free time was at hand so........I started pondering.  Here were/are my thoughts.

To look forward I found myself looking backwards 10 years to recall where we had travelled to reach this point. The quantum leap forward over this time would suggest that there will be change at the same, if not a greater pace over the next decade.

Ten years ago, dial-up modems and, for the lucky few, ‘Jetstream’ gave us Internet access. We lugged 20kg laptops with 256k of RAM (if we were lucky) and technology guys and gals sometimes had nine-digit CompuServe email addresses and gazed in amazement when someone remembered theirs and sent a ‘hello’ email. Software updates were sent to us via a stack of 3.5-inch floppy disks and most of us had huge folders of CDs we kept in our cars for music on the go. We were deemed to be uber-cool if we owned Motorola StarTAC analogue cellphones and dark winter nights were spent driving to the video store to rent VHS movies. PlayStation 1 had just arrived, we still purchased film in funny little plastic canisters, Sam Morgan was still working for a wage and TradeMe was not even an idea.

Cloud computing had hit the headlines but not as we know it today. Start-up companies during the dotcom era had raised millions on the premise of renting ‘apps online’ via a subscription-based pricing model. Everyone wanted to be an application service provider (ASP) , if you believed the press, everyone was! Buying software was ‘old hat’ and bound for the scrap heap, or so we thought.

Locally in New Zealand, I had convinced the UNISYS executives to invest in an Asia-Pacific ASP operation where we would offer hosted applications, CRM, ERP, Survey tools and server hosting. Unisys ASP Services was soon born. My now General Manager of Systems and Technology at ICONZ and I led the charge against Telecom’s e-Solutions by which they tried to host all sorts of things. We would never figure out, nor could they, what these were! The big green dot, however, was all over New Zealand!

I remember celebrating with my team when three weeks after launch we signed our first customer: five CRM users on a $90.00-per-user 12-month contract. What a week that was! Our ideas and business model were well ahead of their time... possibly, but only just, and many players that stuck in there are household names today. Salesforce.com, only a fledgling idea at the time, is the world benchmark for hosted CRM today and even Unisys, after years in hibernation following the launch of ASP Services in New Zealand, has joined the worldwide ‘cloud services’ market, again. 

For the question, What for cloud computing in the future? I believe we will see a shift far greater than we have experienced in the last 10 years. With the emergence of mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and many others, we will see most people accessing software applications online as against installing applications on local devices. Cloud providers like ICONZ will manage vast server farms where these applications will be maintained, patched and updated automatically, all served across massive and unlimited broadband networks. These server (cloud) farms will be replicated across multiple locations and even geographic time zones to ensure total 100% availability, not just a written guarantee. Like the Internet, they will always be there whenever and wherever you need them.

My prediction is that cloud computing will become more dominant than the desktop and server over the next 10 years but this does not suggest that they will disappear anytime soon. Most expert opinion I read points to a hybrid life in the next decade where a larger proportion of computing functions will move towards the cloud and others will reside locally.

For the many who believe cloud computing will fade away as a new-century technology fad, I would remind you of one of history’s famous predictions... “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas J Watson, President of IBM, 1943.

Cloud computing will continue to expand and dominate web-based application development and information transaction environments because it offers so many advantages, allowing users to have easy, instant, scalable and individualised access to tools and information they need wherever they are, locatable from any networked device. In essence, we will live in a world where our business and personal applications will be available for us to use wherever we are and on whatever device we choose.

A switch to mostly cloud-based activity has already occurred without so much as a cursory glance, especially through the use of browsers and social networking applications. Most of us today use an assortment of devices to connect with remote servers and carry out tasks such as working in Google Docs, following web-based RSS feeds, uploading photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, doing remote banking, buying and selling on Trade Me, visiting with friends on Facebook and blogging on WordPress.

Sure, there are some aspects of cloud computing to be ironed out before there is mainstream adoption. Security, quality of service, cross-border sovereignty laws, available and high-speed broadband, privacy, interoperability and application/data portability are all issues high on people’s minds. This time though, the technology trend is here to stay, if indeed it ever left at all. 

Until next time and some spare time.