As I share photos with readers using the eceblogger Flickr account, I cannot help but think about how cloud-based services are currently taking the world by storm (pun definitely intended). In a seminar about cloud computing, Curtis Quimby and Dan Dulac from Enterasys Networks discussed the origins of the cloud and the benefits of it. From security standards to financial benefits, the seminar as a whole was a great view into what the “cloud” buzz is all about. An interesting point was made by Curtis when he mentioned that he noticed a cyclical trend in the industry. In the 1980’s, mainframes dominated the scene and soon after, services and storage shifted to personal computers and smaller clusters. However, with the current excessive use of cloud-based services such as Gmail, Facebook, and Flickr the trend is now coming back to out-sourcing storage and services. If this is true, we are now pushing towards the apex of this trend. What does this mean? Mobile computing will become even more prevalent and information accessibility will be of high importance. As we perform our own mobile development work here at Project54, this certainly is an exciting future ahead of us. I do wonder what the downward trend will mean when we reach it; but I suppose by then someone will tweet about it.
Mark Taipan