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A (Not So New) Cloud
One of Steve Jobs’ last heroics was the announcement and launch of Apple’s iCloud, which allows mp3’s and other Apple applications to be accessed on the internet without taking up space on individual computer hardware. Software engineers and user interface designers have been privy to cloud based computing for years, but now it’s the broader market’s turn to enter the world of, “the cloud.”
The cloud is a type of software that stores your data (emails, pics and documents) and runs in your web browser on the Internet. Its basic name is, “Software as a Service (SaaS),” and is more commonly known as cloud-based computing. So, why is the cloud so significant?
For free-lance and entrepreneurial software engineers, the boom in cloud services has been a game changer. Soon, the average internet user will feel this boom, if they haven’t already. Several years ago, all programs you used had to be installed and upgraded, which took up space on our hard drives and couldn’t be accessed on other computers without re-installing.
Now, almost all software is becoming fashioned for international and indiscriminate-computer access. A common attribute of this cloud boom is that most of the software is accessible without cost! For software coding entrepreneurs and businesses, this creates massive opportunity as, “open source,” applications fuel a collaborative market trend (Wikipedia is, in part, a result of this open source free access).
Aside from the emergence of collaborative consumption business models (Examples: Hadoop, Grooveshark, SalesForce and SurveyMonkey), data, information and software is becoming more accessible for coders, internet enthusiasts and web designers. Some cloud sources are sophisticated enough to create profile login entries, whereby users can access organized and specific software to apply to their projects.
Cloud-based computing is an important trend to monitor to understand where our internet consumer products are headed and where investment deal-flow is directed. As we witnessed with one of Steve Jobs’ last performances, the market is moving toward a (not so new) dynamic in the internet space – the cloud.
- Brandon Chicotsky
