The original software models were essentially cloud based. They were mainframes and all applications existed and were run on the mainframe. With the advent of the client-server computing model applications were pushed out to the desktop. The main reason for this there were limited amounts of good networks and processing power to run these applications. Imagine trying to create a slide deck over a dial up connection. I can here the modem screech now. Also if we needed to access our applications on a network then we couldn't get access it to it when the network is down. That problem still exists to a certain extent but enormous strides have been made. Through my years in sales and selling virtual desktop solutions the main question we always got when we pitched virtual desktops was what do I do when I am on a plane. The recurring theme was can I still work when I don't have a connection if I have my information local.
In the past I probably would have agreed with them. As a solution architect I was on the road a lot so if I needed to access the web or write a paper I needed to load an application to do it on my laptop and I needed to be connected to a network. A lot of changes have occurred however which are changing that paradigm.
Advanced ubiquitous high-speed networks
It seems like almost anywhere I go there is a way to get a network connection. Whether it is a guest network at a customer site or a PC card that enables my laptop to attach to my wireless carrier the networks are there to be found. Personally if all else were to fail my cell phone can act as a wireless hot spot and I am able to access my application and the web right now. As a home based employee most of my applications are already served up over an network.
In past years I may have been concerned about the performance of my application while using a wireless network from my cell phone carrier. I remember first generation WiFi cards that they had for laptops and how painful they were to down load anything. Now with 3G and 4G the performance is almost as good as the internal wireless card on the PCs. I also can't remember the last time I put a physical Ethernet cable in computer.
Just to prove the point at how connected we are in the recent snow storms that hit the Northeast in October when most places lost power for several days I was able to stay connected. I didn't have power in my house but I was able to use my cell phone as a hot spot for a connection. If they could improve the battery life of my laptop and my cell phone I could have been constantly connected.
As far as the argument about what to do while you are on a plane, I say sleep and enjoy not having to be constantly connected with the world. If you find that you can't do that the argument in the next couple of years as most airlines for follow suit with Lufthansa and allow you to connect to the internet from the one place in the world that you could be free from being constantly connected. There is a large area of the world that doesn't have connections but with time that will all disappear.
Mobile and Tablet Devices
AOL started it. Google expanded on it. Apple perfected it. Applications have been the basis of computing from the beginning. Email was one of the first applications that people looked at a 3rd part to provide for them. Then a easier way to shop and book airline flights and hotels and not to buy just about anything was one or the primary uses of technology. You could say that web pages could be one of the first software that was offered online. Now Google and Apple have made it that now matter where we go we can take our applications with us. With iPhone and Android phone I can pretty much access just about all of my data from wherever I am. Tablet devices are also everywhere. iPad's and Kindle Fire and the numerous Android version give easy access to immense content.
Many sales organizations are starting to arm their sales staff with iPads as opposed to the traditional PC. This is not going away and as WiFi becomes a default offering on all PCs then connectivity will be everywhere in all these devices. Just look at the Apple website at their iCloud offering. They are looking to put your data in the cloud. And why wouldn't they, it is more protected there.
Data Protection
This last weekend a friend of mine came to me and said that his laptop had crashed and he had some information that he needed to get off of it. I spent about a day or so trying to figure out if the disk drive could even be read and then was able to eventually mount his drive and pull data to an external hard drive. If his data had been stored in the cloud it wouldn't have mattered what his laptop did.
Now there are certain applications that we may have trouble giving up to the cloud like word processing and spreadsheets and presentations but to be quite honest the web can give me access to those applications where ever I am and from whatever device I choose to use, and it is stored somewhere else and is backed up.
Lately I have been noticing a spate of cloud based OS's that have been popping up to take advantage of the fact that I don't need to have local application. Joli OS is a prime example. It is essentially termed a social OS where I can see the stuff that I care about and also some of the stuff that my friends and colleagues care about. It may be a while before businesses can trust (and should trust) this technology but the writing is on the wall
In the end game most software will eventually follow the cloud path. Marc Benioff summed it up best in his keynote address at recent recent Nov 2011 Cloudforce in NY. He said "If you're upgrading and updating the cloud you're not in the cloud. If its about more hardware, its not about the cloud. If its about another software update its not about the cloud."
I agree with these statements. Software is the heart of business and if you don't have to maintain an infrastructure to do business then you can focus on doing something else. There are lots of other reasons why I believe SaaS will take over the computing world but I will save those for another day and another post.
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