By Michael F. Carmichael
July 1, 2010
If there’s more than one computer in your office, even a home office, it’s most likely connected to the others in a network. The greater the number of computers, the more complex the network.
That’s changing, according to Liz Siver, Central Region Managed Partner General Manager, Microsoft Corp. The cloud, according to Silver, “is an opportunity to extend applications across the desktop, the Internet and the mobile device. That, in its most simplistic form, is what we’re trying to do with our cloud strategy today.”
But what, in its most simplistic form is “the cloud”? It’s the Internet.
Back in the old days, when the Internet was young, technical folks were still diagramming computer networks on paper. When they needed to add the ‘Net in their diagrams, they used the shorthand symbol of a cloud instead of trying to include all of its complex infrastructure.
Flash forward a few years. Corporate computer power became less and less expensive and smarter desktop machines replaced dumb terminals, even in the largest companies. Instead of each machine having to have a copy of a particular software program companies would buy a license for the entire company. Employees could use the program but it was actually housed elsewhere – you might say it was “in the cloud.” This idea was called Software as a Service or SaaS.
When Microsoft recently released a free, albeit somewhat limited-functionality, cloud version of its popular Office suite of applications, the idea of coordinating work in the cloud began to spread to businesses of all size.
“Cloud computing has taken on a tremendous amount of momentum,” confirms Siver. “It’s a cost savings. Smaller businesses have small IT budgets and often even smaller IT staff. Using the cloud can expand those resources.”
The addition of the cloud to the mix changes the traditional role of Microsoft’s “partners,” independent businesses which historically have sold and installed the physical hardware and software necessary to manage a company’s business. Instead, says Siver, “They’re helping their customers manage choice. There are certain applications that customers will feel more comfortable keeping on their servers. Other applications may become more desirable to migrate to the cloud.”
Having an application based in the cloud – on remote computers accessed via a Web browser – has definite advantages for some corporate applications. There are also potential disadvantages.
One of the advantages is that businesses can reduce the expenses involved with having to rely on the most up-to-date internal computer servers to host both data, and the associated programs needed to create and access that data. They can farm those tasks out to companies, such as Microsoft, to do the hosting for them.
| A diagram showing "the cloud" in action — the Internet being accessed by many computers. |
|
The disadvantage is that the companies are relying on others for data security. The Pentagon has created an entire command structure to prevent (and possibly wage) cyber warfare because of the increasing number of breaches of national data security by offshore attackers. The obvious question is whether there is sufficient security provided by those external hosting companies, such as Microsoft, for businesses to rely on them.
Microsoft’s Siver responds, “Security is much more rigorous in software applications out there in the market today, such as the security features built in to Windows 7.” Combined with other security features, Siver says that the Microsoft service agreement for hosting provides for secure access “99.9 percent of the time.”
So what’s the main benefit of cloud computing, particularly for small business? “Flexibility,” says Siver. “Where their workforce is and how collaborative they can be. How can they share data and documents in real time to meet the needs of their end customers.”
By using the cloud employees can, for example, build, or remodel, a sales tool such as PowerPoint in real time. They are no longer dependent on whether their individual computer has sufficient memory to handle a large document. They no longer have to rely on the whims of their Internet service provider which may have e-mail file-size limits or delay the delivery of a large file because of traffic volume on the rest of the network.
This collaboration process is particularly valuable for employees working in different time zones, but applies as well to those working from virtual offices in the same geographic area. An increasing number of companies are using employees who work in home offices and cloud-based collaborative tools facilitate that kind of cost-reduction in the size of a company’s physical office space.
“Our vision of cloud computing is the power of choice,” explains Siver, who “sees that in one, two, five years from now companies of all sizes will need the flexibility to work in the cloud as well as ‘on prem’ [Microsoft shorthand for ‘on premises’ – in a traditional physical office with traditional office-based computer servers and desktop computers accessing them.] We do not believe that the desktop is going to go away.
“On the other hand,” Siver continues, “the ability of their employees to securely access an office application from any computer anywhere is going to help companies grow faster in the marketplace.”
“Any computer anywhere” can include public computers in libraries, personal laptops, tablets such as the iPad, smart cell phones – even the limited capacity mini-computers called netbooks. Any employee with a device that is connected to the Internet through a Web browser will have the ability to use their company’s specific applications and information, securely, via the cloud.
“We think of our cloud applications as an extension of the company’s desktop applications running on their internal server,” says Siver. This can mean a reduction in the many versions of a document that can exist when a letter, proposal or spreadsheet is created and then accessed and modified by several people. “When it’s in the cloud, it can remain in sync.
across the organization. A document can be modified in the field and the home office can see exactly what is being presented to a client in a remote location in real time.”
That’s “sync” in its traditional meaning. How the cloud will affect employees whose primary office location has four wheels will be the subject of a future article on the Ford-Microsoft offering called SYNC.