Don’t think cloud computing is a wonderful thing? Wait until everyone and their mother has a netbook in hand.

Yeah, you know, those small Wi-Fi-happy machines sporting 8-13” screens, flash-based storage drives, Intel Atom central processors, etcetera, etcetera.

For a large portion of the global population, even those in well-developed regions, this might seem like really loose premise. Netbooks for everyone? Why not get an full-on laptop? You can do more with your dollar! And any simple tasks on the Web can be done with some of the smartphones making the rounds on hardware review sites, right? Well, I’m not so sure.

Here’s the thing. Web apps aren’t meant to be simple. At least not in a utilitarian sense. Yes, developers serious about the craftmaking of such services go to considerable lengths to ensure greater sense of intuitiveness and ease of use than might ordinarily be the case with any equivalent desktop-based program design. Things at the backend need to be “thinner and lighter” in size and weight, too.

But to think we can rely on our iPhones and T-Mobile G1s and BlackBerry Bolds and Storms and whathaveyou to fully engage with office and social media applications seems a tad impractical. Mobile software designs are good and are getting better by the month, but the kind of pixelated real estate you can comfortably stuff in your pant pocket can only provide for so much interactivity. Of course, the outlook for power for the mobile phone market is as rosy as can be right now. But for the foreseeable future, there remains a place for bigger things.

Not so much bigger, though. We recently shared a few notes on the netbook space and how things are progressing in the field, both in hardware and software. It’s safe to say that in recent months, apart from the requisite dotage on Apple’s lineup of philosophically conventional MacBook and MacBook Pro products, the market of netbooks has transferred to a semi-front burner position in terms of attention grabbed and attention earned.

And its quite clear why that is. The class of gadgets led by the Asus EEE PC has performed in ways that would not be the case two or three years ago, and it’s mark as something of a phenomenon largely comes down to price. Consumers can grab a fairly well-equipped netbook from the current crop of options for an average of $300-500. (According to recent news, Asus may launch a $200 offering next year.)

What’s more, users are no longer hindered by absurdly small screen sizes, as was the case for the first run of 7” designs from Asus.

Now…for the credit crisis trick!

It’s said time and time again that in times of economic distress, the consumer doesn’t cease to be a consumer. This is true. He/she only becomes more aware of expenses, paying careful attention to comparisons between products and giving greater voice to his/her needs than his/her wants. Thus, in the present environment, it’s not hard to imagine that the performance of netbooks relative to larger PCs will be strong. Surprisingly strong, perhaps.

Renewed focus and development by manufacturers has brought the budding netbook market from something strictly meant to be an accessory to consumers’ computational lives – and a fantastically high-cost accessory, at that – to something that may very well replace a good amount of activity in the PC arena simply due to its convenient arrival at a near perfect ratio of power and price. The evolution of Web apps, both for productivity and entertainment purposes, into engines that, given a solid broadband connection from server to client and back around, can all but negate traditional norms insofar as “getting things done.”

Yes, there are exceptions to be made. The most outstanding one being reliability of routers and so forth. But methods to diminish the impact of disruptions are becoming more and more commonplace. This goes as much for document editing as data storage and media strangers – both upstream and downstream.

So I’ll place a little wager right here, right now, which says that what will become Joe Web User’s portable computer of choice in the next few years is an two-pound (give or take several ounces), efficient little demon that puts priority on what you can do in the cloud by way of a wireless connection than what you can manage to do “locally.” What say you all?

(Image source: (bottom) Reefed.edu.au)

by Jason Kincaid on October 28, 2008

Zimbra, the collaborative webmail and calendar company that was acquired by Yahoo in 2007, has launched a new product for academic institutions called Zimbra Hosted that will allow schools to run their webmail portals from the “cloud”. Previously schools would have to run Zimbra’s service onsite or through third party hosting companies; now Zimbra will also give them the hassle-free option of letting Zimbra and Yahoo maintain the servers.

Zimbra currently serves over 400 academic institutions. Earlier this year the company scored a major win over Google and Microsoft Exchange (which also offer a suite of competing services) when it was chosen by Stanford as its Email/Calendar management system for students. At the time, we noted that Zimbra was especially strong for its mobile support as well as enterprise-level features.

LOS ANGELES — Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft said Monday that late next year it would begin offering a new “cloud” operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web, where data and services are becoming increasingly centralized.

Fred Prouser/Reuters

Ray Ozzie, a Microsoft software architect, spoke Monday to software developers in Los Angeles.

The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a single style of desktop computer, but by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.

More of those devices use programs that reside on a remote server rather than on the device itself. The servers, in the so-called cloud, deliver what are called Web services, which can be anything from customer relationship software or a Facebook game.

Microsoft is a late entrant into a market that is crowded by a range of players offering every flavor of cloud computing, including Sun Microsystems and I.B.M. as well as Amazon and Google.

Although Microsoft has continued to have strong sales of its operating system software to corporate customers, growth of its Windows Vista operating system appears stalled. Moreover, the company has significantly delayed its next generation of software for mobile smartphones at a time when competitors like Apple and Research in Motion are using their own software to sell more cellphones to corporate customers.

The new Microsoft “cloud OS” — called Azure — gives Microsoft an opening.

But many of the giant software company’s competitors believe it is unlikely that Microsoft will be able to maintain its advantage either in market share or profitability in the future.

“Today’s announcement of Azure is the same Microsoft, keeping developers locked into their proprietary solutions, and failing to grasp the true power of cloud computing,“ said Mark Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that helped pioneer the commercial Web services market. “Microsoft continues to struggle with what to do about cloud computing because the cloud’s new technology and business models cuts into the heart of their software monopoly.”

Nevertheless, Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., declared a third era of operating systems in the hope that it will be able to repeat the success it had with its DOS and Windows operating systems of the 1980s and 1990s.

Azure was designed during the last three years by Ray Ozzie, a software designer whose company, Groove Networks, was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. Mr. Ozzie began taking the reins from Bill Gates as the company’s principal software architect in 2006.

Before an audience of 6,500 software developers, Mr. Ozzie tried to make the case that programmers who miss a shift to a new Microsoft operating platform are taking a huge risk.

Speaking as a software developer who had frequently sat in the audience at similar Microsoft events as a customer, Mr. Ozzie said: “Every time there is a major platform shift in our industry, it has turned into new opportunities for my apps and my business.”

His comment was a clear reference to an earlier juncture in the history of the computer industry, when companies like Lotus Development, where Mr. Ozzie worked, were late to adopt the first generation of the Windows operating system. That shift gave the Windows Office suite a significant advantage and helped Microsoft dominate word processing, spreadsheet and other office software.

While Microsoft’s software business for corporations continues its robust growth, there are increasing questions about whether the company will be able to strengthen its desktop computing business in an era that is increasingly defined by free or advertising-supported Internet services.

Microsoft would use Azure to harmonize traditional proprietary software with a new set of tools based on Internet standards that are widely used to generate the most popular Web services. “This is the first time they are showing all the pieces coming together,” said Peter O’Kelly, a computer industry consultant based in Andover, Mass.

Although Microsoft will not release a commercial version of Azure for a year or more, Mr. O’Kelly said that components of the system like Live Services were already being used by millions of PC users.

Microsoft gave only one significant demonstration of the kind of applications made possible with its new system. Sentient Software showed a mobile social-networking application called Bluehoo. The company said that Azure would make it easier to expand the service by using computing resources provided by Microsoft.

On Tuesday, Microsoft is expected to give its first lengthy demonstration of its Windows 7 desktop operating system, which is intended to rejuvenate the company’s sputtering consumer business. Microsoft has also hinted that it would show off Web versions of several of its Office applications for the first time.

By David Chartier | Published: October 12, 2008 – 09:10PM CT

Washington D.C. has joined 500,000+ businesses and organizations in moving its communication and productivity tools into the cloud. Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District, signed an agreement with Google to migrate the organization’s 38,000 employees to Google Apps, the search giant’s web-based offering of communication and productivity tools. Washington D.C. is a not-insignificant win for Google, and yet another blow to Microsoft’s incumbent Office suite, as a surge of web apps steadily replaces their desktop counterparts.

Kundra signed the contract with Google back in June, and it’s estimated to be worth nearly $500,000 a year, according to Bloomberg. The deal will provide District employees with applications like Gmail for communication, Google Docs for word processing and spreadsheets, the recently launched Google Video for business, and Google Sites to wrap it all together with intranets and wikis.

Google Apps has seen an impressive level of adoption since launching over two years ago in February 2008 as Gmail for your domain. Six months later, Google Apps for Your Domain debuted and has since attracted customers from many industries, including GE, L’Oreal, Arizona State University, and Taylor Woodrow, a construction firm based in the UK. Over 500,000 organizations use one version or another of Google Apps, and Google claims that 3,000 more sign up every day.

Google isn’t the only party encroaching on Microsoft’s Office turf, though. Just over a year ago, Google’s closest competitor in the online business application space, Zoho, introduced Zoho Business, a similar collection of apps for online word processing, spreadsheets, calendaring, and collaboration. So far, GE is probably Zoho’s most significant win. The company first switched its 400,000 desktops from Microsoft Office to Google Apps, according to WebGuild. But in September, GE switched to Zoho due to privacy concerns, Zoho’s broader application and feature base, and Google strangely pushing AdWords as a way to make money.

Zoho’s release last week of a complete e-mail solution—including mobile and offline access via Google Gears (a feature Gmail has yet to support)—should make it an even stronger option. If you consider Zoho’s recently launched marketplace where third-party developers can build customized applications for Zoho customers, the company now has a very broad, and more extensible, alternative to Google Apps.

In response to all this cloud computing competition, Microsoft hasn’t done much and, some argue, it may not have to for a while. Office is still very much the 800 pound gorilla in this space, and a recent US study says that, while 20 percent of Americans have at least heard of online office suites, over 90 percent have never touched one. Plus, 2008 revenues from Microsoft’s Business Division (in charge of, among other things, Microsoft Office) rose nearly 20 percent from 2007 to over $18 billion. To combat online offerings, Office Live Workspaces gets Microsoft’s foot in the web-based productivity door, but it doesn’t offer anything more than an online storage locker for sharing documents.

While Office Live Workspaces reached a notable milestone of 1 million users last month, it still requires desktop Microsoft Office software to be of much value—the very software and all the requisite overhead that an increasing number of customers—like GE—are trying to avoid.

By David Chartier | Published: October 07, 2008 – 05:12AM CT

IBM is apparently tired of its customers complaining that employees are playing movie quizzes on Facebook and blogging at MySpace all day. The company opened up a beta of Bluehouse Monday, its new SaaS (Software as a Service) that combines web-based productivity and meeting tools with social networking.

Capitalizing on the productivity app’s shift from the desktop to the buzzword-y cloud, IBM’s Bluehouse provides a wide variety of communication and collaboration tools for small to medium-size businesses, and even larger. Offered as a web portal, Bluehouse offers tools to host web conferences, share desktops, create social networks with activity streams, share files, create live charts from raw data, and chat.

Notably, many of Bluehouse’s features focus on providing extranet contact with clients and business partners via forms that can be easily published and web conferencing tools that use SSL and work through firewalls. eWeek notes that some services, such as unified telephony, are not offered yet, but integration is coming for things like Lotus Notes and Sametime users to quickly join a web conference with a single click.

 

Bluehouse’s social networking features are also particularly interesting, especially with the level of integration they have with the rest of the software’s features. Contacts can be synchronized from Outlook and Lotus Notes, and things like file sharing, file chat logs, and version control can be tracked across users. IBM has also embraced new aspects of the social media and cloud movements, such as tagging for files, contacts, and projects. A number of video demos show off Bluehouse’s key features like running a meeting and collecting tasks, files, and contacts for a project.

Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, and neither has an ETA for a Bluehouse 1.0. Nevertheless, IBM’s arrival in an increasingly competitive SaaS environment so far dominated by a few key players and a number of smaller startups will certainly liven things up. Google and, more recently Microsoft, have both been carving niches with their respective demographics, and smaller outfits like 37Signals have done well with small businesses by offering smaller, more focused products for project management and online collaboration. If IBM applies the requisite amount of polish to a product as full-featured as Bluehouse, it stands a good chance of becoming a comprehensive option for businesses that need to harness the advantages of web-based services and desktop software integration.

By Ryan Paul  | Published: September 30, 2008 – 09:35AM CT

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman spent yesterday condemning cloud computing and is calling for users to reject popular web applications. He insists that reliance on web-based software poses a serious risk to freedom and privacy. Cloud computing is just a “hype campaign” perpetrated by software vendors who want to control users, he says, and the only way to fight the problem is to stop using the software.

Cloud computing is one of the most significant emerging trends in the technology industry. Users are becoming increasingly reliant on web applications and remote data storage solutions. The popularity of cloud computing is climbing in both enterprise and consumer markets, and the trend is widely regarded as a game-changing advancement in software deployment and consumption. In light of the growing importance of cloud computing, Stallman’s call for its rejection warrants both scrutiny and skepticism. 

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September 29, 2008 – 1:20 pm PDT – by Stan Schroeder  

StallmanRichard Stallman is going berserk over cloud computing. In an interview with the Guardian, he claims that the whole thing is “stupidity.” He claims that “you should not use web applications to do your computing,” because it’s “just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

It seems to me he’s talking about web applications and not cloud computing, which is not entirely the same thing, but nevertheless the sad thing about it is the fact that…

…he’s right. Well, partially. 

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by Steve Gillmor on September 29, 2008

This week two giants spoke to the technology wave known as cloud computing. Larry Ellison called it a new label on what everyone is doing already. He acknowledged he was going along with it to keep his marketing and sales guys happy, but basically he called bullshit on it.

Steve Ballmer talked at a deep level about intelligent caching between the cloud and the client. Over an hour of snappy questions by Ann Winblad and Obamaesque nuance from the Microsoft leader let some significant cat out of the bag. No longer software plus services, the net of Ballmer’s signals was cloud + client. If you believe as Jason Calacanis does that we’re on the brink of a startup depression, the technology industry should be very very afraid.

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