http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/china_world_leader_cloud/
China is racing past US, rest of world - and into the Cloud
new # 1 in the world we will all look up to
China is racing past US, rest of world - and into the Cloud
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mikiem2
ModeratorBut is Not racing to embrace the cloud a bad thing?
That's what still strikes me a couple days after reading the article.
The *Cloud* is still not thoroughly defined -- not everyone is talking about the same thing, the same costs, benefits, Pros & Cons.
In the abstract, using the cloud is a move back towards the old days with the dumb, computer terminal on the desktop, tied into the mainframe where all the real work was done. Microsoft tried to revive that basic model with software running remotely purchased by subscription, and failed. With more people viewing streaming on-line video, & fewer buying, owning actual DVD & Blu Ray discs, have we gotten past that desire to own rather than perpetually rent? My guess, in the U.S. at least, is no -- we don't mind using free stuff like Google Docs or maybe Facebook, but won't pay unless it's a continual buffet of new things, new offerings e.g. Netflix, &/or Hulu & YouTube pay services... we still have that expectation that we'll get something that's ours when we pay you our money. The same resistance has carried over to business, where despite it maybe making good economic sense, we wanted more for what we paid. Adobe's offering their apps on a monthly subscription basis this year, though not really cloud-based -- by this time in 2013 we'll know for sure whether attitudes have finally started to change.
Moving beyond subscribing to software in the cloud [rather than licensing traditional copies], you've got servers for rent. One downside to not owning your own servers, is who is responsible for security, & who pays when the servers are breached, when they get hacked -- if you lose *Really* vital data, could you even put a price on the loss? That's where clouds come in that aren't *Out There* on-line, but a collection of servers in-house that can be re-purposed with ease. On the one hand it's the same as renting your servers from Amazon, but any money stays in-house, transferred from one department's balance sheet to another's. On the other hand it's little different from what some corp. IT departments have been doing for years, well before the concept, or the buzzword "Cloud" became common.
In a country with fewer PCs/laptops, or at the least fewer licensed copies of the Windows that hardware's running, an on-line cloud might present an efficient, en-mass upgrade, allowing everyone to run the same current office software for example. Small & mid-size biz might reap similar rewards, especially if they weren't as concerned about the gov getting into their files [i.e. figured they were in there all ready], &/or didn't have the regulatory burden common in the west -- with all the records that have to be kept, all the regs that have to be adhered to, the smallest western biz is expected to already have that sort of capability in-house or through their accountant. The other day I saw an IBM ad where they helped a mid-sized company move their contact mgmt into the cloud so sales reps could have easier access on the road -- with such a rapid expansion of their capability using the cloud was undoubtedly quicker than setting up the same thing themselves, & it supplied an easy way out if it didn't work, but if it did work I'd expect the now larger company to move that back in-house as part of their necessarily expanded IT dept.
Lower powered cell phones & tablets might make good use of the cloud, but increasing wireless data charges &/or caps are pushing Google for example to update their apps to store more data on the device & work with it off-line. Using wireless networking instead might be just a short term solution, as the same added charges & caps are coming increasingly to land-line based broadband. I had thought gaming might be something where the cloud might excel, then I read of all these Xbox owners desperately hoping the next console version includes BluRay -- apparently even broadband land-line pipes aren't fat enough. So yeah, if China can use the cloud to their benefit, that's cool, more power to them -- I just haven't figured out why much of the rest of the world should be jealous. :)
Posted 12 years ago #
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