There are many new technologies that are poised to take over the world, and we are living in a time where there’s a paradigm shift as far as technology is concerned every few years. This time ten years ago, smartphones weren’t around, the internet was much slower and iPods were only just hitting the scene. We still had polyphonic ring tones and played Snake on our phone – and no one could have guessed what a big impact Apple, Android and Google would have on the way we interact with the world.
So what’s next? Well that depends on who you ask, but something that many people are getting excited about currently is ‘the cloud’ which seems to be the current hot ‘buzzword’. So what exactly does it mean? And how might it change the way we do things? Here we will have a look.
What is the Cloud?
Essentially ‘the cloud’ is something that has been around for a long time. While many of us think of it as a new concept, it is in fact as old as the internet itself. What is meant by the cloud is simply ‘stuff being stored somewhere other than the physical device using it’. In other words then, you could describe websites as being ‘on the cloud’ because they exist online and aren’t downloaded to be viewed – rather being simply stored online for you to view when you want. ‘Cloud hosting’ takes this one step further by ensuring that websites aren’t even on just one server, but rather floating between servers so that you are accessing them from somewhere different each time.
The benefit of this is of course that it saves space on your device and ensures you don’t fill up your harddrive. At the same time though it is also useful for editing things as a group – as you can all make live changes to a file and view the most up-to-date version. And finally having things on the cloud means that you won’t ever accidentally delete them or lose them and that you can access them anywhere.
Services Currently Using the Cloud Well
There are currently some services that are using the cloud in a highly effective and very smart way. Take for instance Spotify, which threatens to do to MP3s what MP3s did to CDs – by allowing you to stream any music you want directly off of the cloud and not have to download any of it. For a monthly fee you have access to literally thousands of songs and this means you can listen to your heart’s content without buying any individual tracks and without filling up your harddrive.
Meanwhile the App stores on iPhones and Android devices are also in some ways examples of using the cloud well – for while you download the apps, the fact that they are so quick to obtain means that they really might as well be on your system.
The Future of the Cloud
But that of course will be the next step – running the apps directly off of the internet with no need to download them, meaning that you have access to anything you need as soon as you need it. The only thing we’re waiting for here is fast enough connection speeds, and this of course will have an impact on the marketplace and the monetization of apps. We’re likely to start using apps more by subscription, ‘per use’ or free with ads. Imagine apps that charge you 1cent each time that you use them.
And the next logical step from here is apps that run on the servers rather than on your machine. These will act like PHP, except you will be able to interact with them in real time so that the server is handling all the processing and you are only viewing the graphics and sending your input. This will then result in devices that are incredibly light and that require no real processing power of their own – just a fast connection.
And that in turn will ensure that we see the prices of devices suddenly drop hugely as they will be highly cheap to produce. They will be small sheets of glass, and even integrated into other items like your t-shirts, but they’ll be able to give you access to top-of-the-range graphics and the full productivity suite, and you’ll be able to interact with them in countless different ways.
About the Author:
Jeet is an expert technical writer at directoryroll.com and loves to write on Cloud Servers. He is very good at giving various tips and techniques on maintaining cloud server based websites.
No comments:
Post a Comment