Business solutions going online is perhaps the biggest IT revolution you will see in the next few years. Each day, more and more companies are turning to Internet-based service providers to meet some or all of their business application and computing requirements.
1. In 2005, Zoho.com launched a cloud-based word-processing service and picked up users quickly. Today they offer word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation, note-taking, wikis, invoicing and CRM services and the profitable company now has three million users.
2. In February 2007, Google launched GoogleDocs in its effort to present an alternative to Microsoft Office. The once-dominant Microsoft Office’s monopoly suddenly has a serious contender and the bad news (for Microsoft) is: GoogleDocs is free.
3. Have you heard of netbooks? Those big laptop manufacturers in the States and Taiwan had earlier predicted that computers in the future will have less software locally, and will be connecting to the web to perform most of our daily tasks. Most of the processing power will rest on the central servers up in the "cloud" somewhere, together with the ever-growing stockpile of our work data.
4. Gartner, the world’s leading technology research company, predicted that by 2012 one-fifth of the world’s businesses will own no IT asset. Well, the demand for servers and storage will actually go up, but the ownership of those assets are going to shift to third-party solution providers.
History has shown us that when it comes to a huge change of patterns in Internet trends, we have always taken time to settle in.
When we first used emails in the 90s, we refrained from sending personal details like home address and phone numbers. Today we transact with credit cards online.
When we first interacted with people online more than a decade ago, we used nicknames. Today we are eager to tell the world who we really are and use our own identities in social media.
We’ll always have concerns and take precautionary steps when we enter some uncharted waters. Our reluctance to accept a new behaviour is simply human nature. Especially if this involves personal information and business intelligence.
How Big the Cloud Computing Industry and Why Cloud Computing is Sexy
by Jimmy Yeoh - http://www.thesundaily.com/article.cfm?id=52794
