Cloud watchers have been in their element in recent weeks. That’s not those delightful shapes we see above us in the sky, nor even the tag clouds which seem even more popular all the time. These clouds are much more ephemeral if not virtual. However there have been some major movements that will be important as time moves forward.
If you find this all a little cryptic you might read the Google account by Alfred Spector, VP Engineering, and Franz Och, Research Scientist on The intelligent cloud
In coming years, computer processing, storage, and networking capabilities will continue up the steeply exponential curve they have followed for the past few decades. By 2019, parallel-processing computer clusters will be 50 to 100 times more powerful in most respects. Computer programs, more of them web-based, will evolve to take advantage of this newfound power, and Internet usage will also grow: more people online, doing more things, using more advanced and responsive applications. By any metric, the “cloud” of computational resources and online data and content will grow very rapidly for a long time.
As we’re already seeing, people will interact with the cloud using a plethora of devices: PCs, mobile phones and PDAs, and games. But we’ll also see a rush of new devices customized to particular applications, and more environmental sensors and actuators, all sending and receiving data via the cloud. The increasing number and diversity of interactions will not only direct more information to the cloud, they will also provide valuable information on how people and systems think and react.
That is very heady stuff. However it all came down to earth just a short time later with a headline that GE Drops Google, Selects Zoho.
General Electric has decided to forgo a partnership with Google and has formalized a strategic partnership with Zoho for its 400,000 desktops. GE made the decision after a vigorous evaluation of both products. A GE spokesperson who did not want to be identified said their decision was based around issues of personal and corporate privacy, functionality, support, features and Zoho won hands down.
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Zoho is a remarkable company. Zoho offers a suite of online web applications geared towards increasing productivity and offering easy collaboration. Zoho’s online office tools (SaaS) include a word processor, spreadsheet application, presentation tool, hosted wiki, notebook, CRM etc. They have out maneuvered all the usual suspects such as Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce at their own games. Zoho is an example of the new Web economics at work. The company hails from India, has never taken venture funding and has a ten person operation in Silicon Valley. Yet, if you look at its suite of products you would think it has a Fortune 500 company backing it. The company employees 600 engineers, developers, product managers, and technicians in India that develop and build its products. As a result, that’s how the company supports GE, Swisscom (the AT&T of Switzerland), and other large customers.
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This was a major blow for Google and its cloud computing initiatives. Google has won hands down in search, search advertising, and with some consumer products such as Gmail but on the corporate side, the traction has been slow and Google needs the corporate market for the next cycle of its growth.
Not to be outdone this week Steve Ballmer of Microsoft revealed that they will soon release ‘Windows Cloud’ OS.
Within a month, Microsoft will unveil what Ballmer called “Windows Cloud.” The OS, which will likely have a different name, is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications, said Ballmer, speaking in London to an auditorium of IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference.
There are some skeptics. Tim Beyers of the Motley Fool suggested that Mr. Softy’s Head Is in the Clouds.
For all of its detractors, cloud computing has entranced more than a few coders, with salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) having 80,000 developers committed to its Force.com toolset. That’s important, because developers are the butter for Microsoft’s bread. If Ballmer has a cloud environment in play, it’s because he doesn’t want to see coders choosing other platforms. Think of “Windows Cloud” as an essential part of Microsoft’s “software plus services” strategy, which, from what I can tell, is a mishmash of desktop software and cloud-computing services.
I guess the bottom line on all this is we had better keep watching the clouds.
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