Firstly he discusses “location sharing”, whereby people will be able to show their friends exactly where they are rather than telling them on twitter or Facebook (once again thanks to mash ups!).   Think of the potential business applications this could bring.  For instances firms could use the software, to see the areas their target customers spend most of their in and thus allow them to better place their advertising billboards for maximum coverage.

Secondly he discusses internet TV and the further rise of sites like Hulu or BBC iplayer.   Business wise we can see firms such as Sky have already been thinking about the changes this could bring to their business.  Earlier this year Sky rolled out their Internet TV service allowing customers with a subscription to watch TV anywhere in the world.   In recent months they have also rolled out the system onto the Xbox 360 platform. Nicholas Deleon(2009) mentions that does also include Sky’s full range of football programming arguably one of the main reasons why people originally moved to satellite TV.  The firm has also introduced Internet TV subscriptions, thus allowing consumers to move away from the traditional TV and set-top box.  This does also backup the theory that one day the games console will be a true full multimedia platform.   PS3 on the other hand allow UK users access to BBC Iplayer and also sell an accessory which allows the console to be used as freeview recorder, unfortunately it can not support HDTV in the UK  And thus can never expect high sales in the country.

Finally Pete mentions a further increase in E-book readers sales, even though on his CNN Blog he does argue that E-readers are still only a fad.  I personally have to agree and only expect a really boom if such products can somehow be better integrated into Smartphones,  but with their small size this doesnt seem possible.

References:

Cashmore, P. (2009). 10 Web trends to watch in 2010. Available: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/03/cashmore.web.trends.2010/index.html. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

Cashmore, P. (2009). Brace yourself for the real-time Web . Available: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/10/cashmore.realtime.web/index.html. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

CNN. (2009). Web Trends 2010. Available: http://www.cnn.com/video/. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

Deleon, N. (2009). Sky Sports heads to Xbox 360 this autumn: Live football yay. Available: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/29/sky-sports-heads-to-xbox-360-this-autumn-live-football-yay/. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

What happens when your firm wants to move between cloud computing suppliers?  The article compares this mammoth task to that of moving your social networking account from MySpace to Facebook.   This is one of the large examples of loss of freedom clients opt into when moving into cloud services.  Very similar to being locked into a proprietary piece of software.   The author agrees with the articles view on creating a standard so clients can move much easier between suppliers.   But will they really want to? This would put firms under much more pressure to perform, and with firms such as Microsoft and Apple notorious for having lock in controls on their products, will they do so?

People have also identified many other potential problems with the cloud computing model.  One which everyone should be aware of is that of Information security.  Gartner(2009) suggests cloud computing is “fraught” with security risks.   Not just in usual areas such as data management, risk and piracy.  But also in more obscure areas such auditing.   Many people would believe that the large firms offering these services would be able to avoid issues such as this.  But as a news report by the David Sarno(2009) shows, things still happen.   Recently Twitter has begun its tentative steps into creating an API which can be used for businesses, but with an attack originating from Eastern Europe earlier this year bring twitter down will firms really want to use it?

Mache Creegar(2009) backs up the theory that cloud computing firms would in fact increase IT security for most firms.  As they offer IT products as their main business focus and thus are equiped with many more IT focused core competences compared to other firms.  Which should mean these firms better understand security qualms that could possibly arise and thus are better equiped to prevent them.

So we have briefly looked at some of the main problems with cloud computing,  but still many firms are continually moving over to cloud computing solutions.  Why are they?

There are many positives that firms can benefit from the move.   One of the larger benefits many people envisage is that of cost savings.  For Westminster Uni the savings came from moving over from propriety software such as MS Office which have expensive and complex licencing agreements to Google Apps which cost a fraction of the price.  Moving over to IaaS solutions also allow upgrades to be carried out much easier.  This is a pressing issue for establishments like Universities with applications and attendances soaring in recent years.  They must be able to easily upgrade their IT components when needed.  For some firms this upgrade needs to be immediate, the scalability of IaaS physical or software solutions  allows for upgrades to happen this fast.  Compare this to a firms own IT department which may take a full day or longer!   Firms don’t always move to cloud computing solutions for financial reasons.  Because most cloud computing solutions allow access to your systems through a web browser, it reduces the complexities of users using different operating systems and the potential software conflicts this may introduce.   If you use a web browser, you can access your work!   This also means its much easier for business which have employee’s constantly on the move to access firms own systems with Laptops or smartphones.

Cloud computing allow firms to move their complex IT systems away from their business and focus on their own core competences.  But if the right cloud solution isn’t found the new system could actually cause new complex issues to arise.

Tricipher’(2009) case study on the Ferrilli information group’s implementation explains that their original cloud implementation created new issues for the firm.  After completion, staff had 12 different apps to use each requiring their own login details.  The firm then moved to a single sign on client with myonelogin.  From this we can spot another potential security situation arising,  this single login service has reduce the number of security levels.

Cloud suppliers often also have  much better disaster recovery systems, moving to such solutions means firms do not need costly backup servers incase such events occur.  But it does mean that customer should always check their vendors disaster plans before hand,  data loss would be costly for the firm.   A second factor firms must discuss with potential vendors is that of service levels.   Here firms agree the minimum uptime of a service (not including maintenance), if these are not met financial penalties are often enforced.  Perhaps we will see battles regarding this appearing in the newspapers in the future?

References:

Creeger, M. (2009). Cloud Computing: An Overview. Available: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1554608. Last accessed 06 December 2009.

Gartner. (2009). Key Issues for Cloud Computing. Available: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=158484. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

Sarno, D. (2009). Getting Past the Fear of Computer Clouds. Available: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/19/business/fi-cloud19. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

The Economist. (2009). Unlocking The Cloud. Available: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TPSQDTRT. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

Tricipher. (2009). SaaS Made Simple for Ferrilli Information Group. Available: http://www.myonelogin.com/downloads/FIG_story.pdf. Last accessed 11 December 2009.

Mache (2009) defines cloud computing as the moving of [IT] services, data storage and computation off site to an external, centralized facility more often or not run by a contracted third-party.

An easy example of this would be if our university decided that it would rather use Gmail for its email system rather than our locally hosted Microsoft exchange server.   Does it seem likely to you? No?   Well, Westminster Uni took the plunge last year, Martin Veitch (2008) said that the university began its rollout of the system to over 25,500 users.   To help the Uni engage with their “Gen-X, Gen-Y” users.   As our age group is now one that was brought up on the Web, more importantly their IT systems director also noted that most of their users were using web based systems anyway.  This was making their tradition in house system mostly redundant and wasteful, making the implementation create cost savings for the business.   Such benefits as this will be discussed in tomorrows blog!

Cloud computing services can be divided into three areas:   The first and most widely seen by general web users is that of Software as a Service.  The most popular set of SaaS products are that of Google’s wide ever-growing selection of Apps.   Another popular set of applications is that of Zoho.   These allow users to carry out tasks which often needed expensive applications to be installed on your own PC to be completed using applications now found on the web.   These are either free or at a much reduced cost compared to traditional products such as the Microsoft office suite.   This has caused a stir in the traditional IT business model and is causing firms such as Apple and Microsoft to rethink their strategies and start to move into the SaaS market with Microsoft Office 10 having its own online collaboration system.

Cloud services can also be defined as Platform as a Service products.   Personally i believe this is one of the most exciting areas of cloud computing one that i think deserves its own blog post.   Firms such as SAP and once again Google operate in this area.   These firms create web-based API’s which allow users to then go on and create their own “Mash-Ups”  the associated wikipedia(2009) page defines these as “web pages or applications that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service”

The final area which is predominately concerned with businesses is that of infrastructure as a Service products.  Firms such as IBM, Amazon and Microsoft see this as the IT battleground of today.   This area of cloud computing is primarily concerned with companies who want to move from their existing in house server systems to that operated by third parties often from the opposite side of the globe.   By doing so firms release much of their control to said provider.   But then would gain much higher levels of security and knowledge, that the firms would not be able to attain using the traditional system.

Tomorrow i will look deeper into “the cloud”, discuss the positives a firm can gain from moving into cloud computing.  But also look at many of the negatives people including one that the Economist(2009) calls the “Lock in”

References:

Creeger, M. (2009). Cloud Computing: An Overview. Available: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1554608. Last accessed 06 December 2009.

Rogers, Everett M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan Company.

Veitch, M. (2008). Google Apps lands another win with Westminster University. Available: http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3289/google-apps-lands-another-win-with-westminster-university/. Last accessed 06 December 2009.

Wikipedia. (2009). Mashup (Web Application Hybrid. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29. Last accessed 06 December 2009.

The interesting section of this report comes when the author acknowledges the number of potential web mobile users there are in the world, with around 4 billion people currently owning a mobile phone.  This shows us that firms really are starting to realise the potential mobile web has.   The “Did You Know 4.0” video showcased at the Economist Media Convergence conference (2009) estimates that the “mobile device” will be the worlds primary connection device to the internet by 2020.  The need for firms to be “on board” with the mobile web was also discussed by Mary Meeker(2009) at this years web 2.0 conference (2009).  Interestingly she also suggests that mobile network firms my struggle to meet their customers bandwidth needs with the rapid growth in the industry.   Her presentation slides also allude to the future of the mobile phone itself as being a remote control over future cloud services.   With the amount of mash-ups currently available thanks to the iphone apps store, maybe this day is closer than we think?

References:

Meeker, M. (2009). Economy+Internet Trends. Available: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21362476/MS-Economy-Internet-Trends-102009-FINAL. Last accessed 26 November 2009.

Opera Software. (2009). State of the Mobile Web. Available: http://www.opera.com/smw/. Last accessed 26 November 2009.

Rao, L. (2009). Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users. Available: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/mobile-web-usage-continues-to-explode-as-opera-mini-nears-40-million-monthly-users/. Last accessed 26 November 2009.

The Economist. (2009). Did You Know 4.0. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8. Last accessed 26 November 2009.

The Economist. (2009). Media Convergence Forum. Available: http://mediaconvergence.economist.com/. Last accessed 26 November 2009.

These savings would be also be offset by new occurring costs, as many other costs would be created in the moving of IT staff to the region to monitor and run the servers.   Also to really make a large effect on the industies CO2 emissions firms would have to move all their servers to the country.  This of course will never happen as all firms now have backup servers and farms around the world, incase the worst does happen.   This would also create speed issues for countries in areas such as South America and Asia when accessing the servers in Iceland, this may not be a problem for some simple websites.  But for some firms this wont be good enough

Overall the idea is promising and could help in reducing the IT industries carbon footprint, which will only get larger as more servers are needed to help power companies such as Google’s global networks, which are still growing today with new innovations.

References:

Hancock, S. (2009). Iceland looks to serve the world . Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8297237.stm. Last accessed 4 November 2009.

Finally i added these websites into my wordpress blog using widgets which take advantage of each websites API’s.

Over the next few months i hope to highlight and discuss some of the IT topics currently being discussed on the web.