Web 2.0 and the “cloud” come of age
Francis Turner
January 28th, 2009
The problem with Web 2.0 and “cloud computing” has always been that sometimes you just don’t have internet connectivity. Hitherto most previous attempts at server-centric computing have failed. Enough critical users are on the road enough of the time that server only solutions have failed - remember Oracle’s doomed efforts or a decade ago? The same potential problem has hit web 2.0 applications as well. Salesforce.com has a dedicated offline mode and synchronization method for example and many other web 2.0 applications simply don’t work offline. This obviously limits their use in an increasingly mobile world.
However now the price of serious amounts of memory and storage (flash drives at a few Euros/dollars/swiss francs/pounds per gigabyte and gigabytes of DRAM similarly priced) means that we ought to be able to cache “most recently used” stuff locally and rely on the cloud as a repository of the rest. Until recently all this was irrelevant because the only platform we could use was the laptop with its large hard disk, Windows OS, Microsoft Office suite and comparatively limited battery life. Given the full service Windows OS and Office suite there really wasn’t much incentive in Web 2.0 / cloud versions of basic office productivity software.
Now, however, we have the netbook. Netbooks are frequently linux based and hence don’t have Microsoft Outlook/ Word etc. They also have less memory/storage compared to today’s laptops (perhaps about the same as was common 3-5 years ago) and most important of all they cost a LOT less. They also weigh a lot less and are thus ideal for business trips. Their real drawback though is that they are underpowered and so when back in the office the user wants his real computer - and thus faces the “Sync” challenge.
This combination means that ideal solution is some kind of cloud computing with offline storage. And Google is now able to offer this for Gmail accounts. Not only that but it offers “flaky” mode support for travellers with intermittent internet access. As someone who was recently in that situation I can say that this looks like a real winner.
It may also be the bullet that kills Microsoft. But that is the subject of a separate post