Ease of PC upgrades is the biggest strength of cloud

Thursday, September 16, 2010

For many people, the most frustrating part of buying a new PC, or fixing one that has crashed, is the time and money spent reloading and reconfiguring the new system.

With cloud computing, however, the aggravation of finding that Microsoft Office disk buried deep in a storage cabinet can be minimized. The ease of PC upgrades through the cloud is perhaps the strongest reason yet for adopting the technology, Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor wrote in a recent Network World article.

Applications such as webmail services are rapidly reducing the need for programs like Microsoft Outlook. People can now access their email, contacts and calendars from any well-connected PC and most mobile devices, the writers stated.

The writers acknowledged that this is primarily useful on the personal level, but in a totally cloud-based world, it could apply equally well to the corporate world. For instance, businesspeople could potentially use any computer or mobile phone access their cloud-based work email.

Cloud computing is still in an relatively infant stage, with few providers delivering cloud-based services. However, recently research by Saugatuck Technology suggests that 57 percent of large companies and 65 percent of SMBs plan to adopt Software-as-a-Service within the next two years.