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Unisys foresees a battle between the clouds |
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If the history of the computer industry is anything to go by, the action is always in the niche of the next big new idea, where a big fight is almost guaranteed amongst the firms that compete to exploit it. The latest in this phenomenon is cloud computing, according to Unisys. With large and small players already in the fray, the idea is that computing will increasingly be delivered as a service over the Internet from vast warehouses of shared machines seems to have taken deep roots. Documents, e-mails and other data will be stored online, or “in the cloud”, making them accessible from any PC or mobile device. Many things already work this way, like e-mail, shared photo albums, calendars and shared documents. Life among the clouds Cloud computing does promise to makes life easier for consumers. First there is the simple stuff - no need to install any software, cost effectiveness given that many cloud services are free or supported by advertising or subsidised by a minority of users who pay for a premium service. Then come the small but significant pluses, such as using a cloud-based e-mail service which means that you do not have to worry about losing all your e-mail if your laptop dies, and you can access your mail from any web browser, anywhere. Unisys says that as cloud services expand, the same will be true for other documents and data. Corporations too can see immense potential in switching to cloud-based e-mail, accounting and customer-tracking systems, which will allow firms to reduce complexity and maintenance costs since virtually everything runs inside a web browser. Providers of cloud services, meanwhile, can benefit from economies of scale by eliminating the need for every company or university to set up and maintain its own mail server, and offering more efficiencies through centralized hosting and management of services. The proof is already there to see in the form of public utilities supplying electric power. Cloud computing promises to do the same for computing power. For the software industry, the ability to summon computing capacity from the cloud when needed would provide it with much leverage. As was seen during the dotcom boom, the first thing a start-up did was raise enough money to buy a room full of servers. If the popularity of a website surged suddenly, even more servers were needed to meet demand. Cloud computing allows for renting of capacity as needed, which in turn allow cloud services to scale up smoothly. This lowers entry barriers and promotes innovation and competition, while presenting an opportunity to the big players like Microsoft, Amazon and others who hope to create the cloud platforms on which other firms will offer services. So, what's the catch? As anyone familiar with the history of computing would point out, there is an obvious concern that a single company will establish a dominant position and attract the attention of antitrust regulators. What IBM did in the mainframe era and Microsoft did in the PC era, one of the new challengers may succeed in doing in the cloud. In its article, Unisys points out that regulators are already acting to head off incipient problems, such as worries about overlapping board members at Apple and Google or the indefinite retention of search histories by search engines. So far so good as none of these skirmishes has yet led to a big court battle, but Unisys says that there are three areas where users of cloud services should be particularly vigilant and providers must be responsive, or regulators may yet step in. First is the familiar risk of technological lock-in. As rival companies promote their own, mutually incompatible standards and formats, moving data from one cloud-based storage system to another, for example, might become a challenge. Buyers of cloud services need to adequately evaluate the dangers of lock-in and favor service providers who allow them to switch between services without too much hassle. Next comes the issue of storing so much personal information and using it to target advertising, which has significant privacy implications. Consumers who are either unwilling or unable to pay for cloud-based services will have to put up with some advertising based on their online activities since it foots the bill. Even if most users are happy to trade some privacy for free services, they should still be able to retain control over their personal data and be able to amend the profiles which service-providers compile and use to target advertising. The third is the issue of the safety of data stored in the cloud. Unisys gives the example of an event earlier this month, when tens of thousands of people with Sidekick smart-phones lost their address books, calendars, photo albums and other personal data, all of which were being stored in the cloud by Danger, an aptly named subsidiary of Microsoft. Though a disaster on this scale is unusual, occasional outages would be more common. Ensuring that cloud-based systems become more reliable is in the best interests of the firms that provide them, if they want to attract and retain customers. As users and regulators prod cloud service providers to gradually move towards new standards, greater transparency and reliability, the threat of regulators intervening more forcefully may expedite the process for them. However, as cloud computing’s advantages already outweigh its drawbacks for many consumers and business users, Unisys estimates that unlike the chapters of previous computer-industry battles, a single victor this time around seems rather unlikely. Consequently, as Unisys sums it up - may the best clouds win! |
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