| 14 Jul 2009 - We're heading for the cloud - officially |
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| Cloud computing has been talked about for years now, it refers to the 'internet' as the 'cloud' - a place where your files can be stored (and therefore accessed from any computer), and a place where even applications can be run from. It's the latter part of that concept that is becoming more and more powerful of late. Google Docs and other similar online sites have been around for a little while now, and I use them - sometimes. Google Docs allows you to share your files, create files or edit files, in 'word', 'excel' or 'powerpoint' formats (which are Microsoft Brands, but surely they are now common words for 'document', 'spreadsheet' and 'presentation'). With Windows 7 so very close to launch, and frankly, it's a winner - the next big step for Microsoft to win back some much needed consumer confidence lost during the soon to be unspoken of VISTA years - is Microsoft Office. This is the software that any right minded computer user (Windows or Mac!) will have to write/calculate and present. The 2007 version is a great leap forward, and takes a bit of getting used to, but from what I've seen thus far about 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/ this is a good transitional product to get us ready for Office 2010. The biggest hint that Office was going to move into the 'cloud' was the domain name 'office.com'. It's been moved to a new site, and 'taken over' by another company. Sure they were in a similar collaboration/file sharing business, but with a big fat cheque on the table, I'd tip they walked away from www.office.com with a Smile! Expect Microsoft's Office suite of products to appear at www.office.com for free, write documents, share etc etc. But, I expect them to be much, much better than Google Docs. That's not a slight on Google Docs, its just that with the intimate knowledge Microsoft have of their own product, you'd expect them to make an online version just as good. It's going to be difficult to move everyone into the cloud - no doubt, but with Google Chrome OS out next year, which essentially is your computer running JUST these web or cloud based applications, the timing couldnt be better for them. Stay tuned to see what the next phase here is, but certainly, a free online MS office is a great looking prospect. For more detailed info, check out Long Zheng's blog - I Started Something - An excellent Microsoft Observer Blog |
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