So far in our series exploring cloud computing for consumers, we've looked at calendars and music. In the multi-device world we now live in, files from your computer are also increasingly being stored in the cloud.
One of the leading Internet companies of this era is essentially a hard drive in the cloud. Dropbox, by some measures the world's 5th most valuable startup, makes it easy for you to sync files across devices. There are other, similar services too. Or you can go completely virtual by using an online office suite like Google Docs. In this article we outline some of the ways that you too can use the cloud to store your files.
Yesterday we started a new series about the Consumer Cloud, defined as an online repository for your content and applications. These services, such as Apple's new iCloud and Amazon's Cloud Drive, are becoming increasingly important in the multi-device world we live in.
One of the applications for which the Consumer Cloud is particularly relevant is the calendar. Unless you still carry around a paper diary, you likely use a digital calendar service such as Google Calendar, Apple iCal or Microsoft Outlook. You probably want to access your calendar while you're out and about, for example on your smartphone or tablet. While there are many ways to sync your calendar to your various devices, they're typically fairly technical or fiddly to set up. In this post we'll explore how calendar sync has evolved... or has it?
Today we're beginning a series exploring the world of cloud services from a consumer's point of view. The word "cloud" refers to an online repository for your software, applications and data. Steve Jobs called this a "digital hub" and, as he explained to his biographer Walter Issacson, "over the next few years, the hub is going to move from your computer into the cloud." Even if you're not an Apple user, the move to a cloud hub is coming your way no matter whose hardware you use. It's going to be a big transition.
We have a special channel devoted to exploring the Cloud from a business point of view, called ReadWriteCloud. But over the past year it's become increasingly apparent that cloud services will soon rule the lives of consumers too. Which cloud service, or combination of cloud services, is right for you?
The financial services industry is warming up to the idea of using the cloud for some of its critical computing needs. More than half of bank transactions will be supported by cloud-based infrastructure and software by 2015, according to a recent report from Gartner.
That is the expectation of about 39% of financial services CIOs worldwide, according to the survey. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 44% of CIOs for banking firms expect that more than half of their institutions' transactions will take place via infrastructure that lives in the cloud, and 33% expect most of them will be processed using some type of SaaS application.
Last week Android Open Handset Alliance member Myriad unveiled Alien Dalvik 2.0 that can port Android anywhere. Alien Dalvik runs is a virtualization tool for Android that runs in the cloud, meaning that Myriad can bring Android anywhere and everywhere.
When we wrote about Alien Dalvik 2.0 last week we promised to track them down and get a hands on video this week at CTIA Enterprise and Apps in San Diego. We are a couple days behind, but finally got a presentation of Android running on an iPad. Check it out below.
Was your workday interrupted by the Google Docs outage yesterday? Mine, too. Well, today, Google Docs Engineering Director Alan Warren apologized to us, and he did so in a nice, thorough blog post that explains exactly what happened.
The Docs team pushed a change that was "designed to improve real time collaboration within the document list." That sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately, it revealed a big old memory management bug that they couldn't detect until it was exposed to the full force of Google Docs users. Basically, the machines that check for updates didn't clear their memory properly, so they filled up and crashed, shifting the load onto other machines, causing them to crash, and away we go. The team caught the problem within half an hour. It's worth reading the blog post to see exactly how.
The first time I stood in a Major League Baseball clubhouse was a month after the original iPad came out. My editor at the time was standing next to me and joked how Apple products were like a fever in the MLB. Whenever the newest and coolest was released from Cupertino, all the players rushed to buy.
I nodded and shrugged. These are rich men that want their toys. I looked over and saw a starting pitcher sitting on a leather couch, playing Plants vs. Zombies on his iPad (he was not pitching that night). Yet, iPads and other devices permeating baseball are not all about watching YouTube or killing zombies. Combined with an era of abundant data, iPads have revolutionized the game.
Cloud and virtualization company Citrix is releasing its popular GoToMeeting application for Android devices. Citrix cites stats from The Telework Coalition that 58% of companies consider themselves a virtual workplace while 67% of all workers use mobile and wireless computing devices. Combined with the fact that Android controls more than 40% of current smartphone market share, GoToMeeting is long overdue for a release on Google's mobile operating system.
GoToMeeting is going to be preloaded onto Motorola's newest Android device, the Droid BIONIC, starting Sept. 8. The iOS version of GoToMeeting has been downloaded nearly 250,000 times. Motorola will also be pre-loading the Citrix Receiver that allows employees to access corporate Windows apps and documents from anywhere.
If you make use of multiple cloud providers then you might want to take a look at what ScaleXtreme offers: think of them as middleware for cloud management. Last week the company announced at VMworld a freemium model, offering its Express service for managing an unlimited number of servers completely free? The catch is that you can only manage a single cloud provider; for handling multiple clouds you will have to pay $15 per month per server for the Expert level of service.
Trend Micro announced at VMworld last week a new version of its Deep Security suite to offer protection across both physical and virtual servers and desktops. Trend purchased this software last year from Third Brigade, and the new version is a significant upgrade in that it consolidates protection across both physical and virtual platforms and does so with a combination of agent-based and agentless solutions. The goal is to protect your data from end-to-end, and they mostly succeed.
