The cloud, pros and cons, and platforms

The Cloud is the future of computing for Google such that all the software will be running on servers, and used through Internet.

Software becomes a service (SaaS, Software as a Service) that is consumed for free or by subscription, rather than a product that is bought or for which is acquired a license.

Benefits

• No software installation: it is available as soon as you log on the site.
• Automatic update of software.
• Online storage, no need to manage anything locally.
• Fewer hardware resources needed for the user.
• Users do not always make backups and can lose the data on their disk, including personal photos, due to a virus, theft, breakdown. It does not happen with the cloud.

Disadvantages

• Internet addiction: in case of missed connection, we no longer have access to the software.
• Misuse of resources: rather than using the power of millions of distributed computers, we have centralized treatment on some servers and that saturates the bandwidth of the Internet.
• Data security is always inferior on the Web than it is locally.
• Confidentiality is questionable, the server people have full access to all information stored.

Critics blame social sites like Facebook and Twitter (and even Google) for using data from their customers. This problem will be even greater if all personal and professionals documents are stored online.

Platforms

The application servers are designed to allow sites and users to connect to online services and software.

OpenStack

Created by RaySpace and NASA, OpenStack is a free and open source platform to install on a personal server. On it you can create a number of virtual servers designed to provide online applications and services.

Azure and Skydrive

From Microsoft, users download extensions for Visual Studio to create services and applications running on Azure. They must subscribe to install their products on the platform.
A complete online shop will come for products installed on the platform.
SkyDrive is an online storage service for individuals.

iCloud

Access to Apple's iCloud is built into all systems of Apple: iPhone, iPad, Mac. All applications are connected to the service where Apple that stores data, it becomes possible for the user to access effortless their documents from any device.
Apple launched iCloud in June 2011 while the first computer using Google Chrome for OS appears at the same time.
But these are two different designs, for Apple the cloud must store data and allow using them on different devices or share them with others. These are the applications that access that data.

Dropbox

Online storage service, Dropbox also allows synchronization of data between different devices.

Screenshot of the Jolicloud OS

Google Cloud

For Google, the cloud is hosting online applications such as Doc, Calendar, Mail, etc.. On the client side, there is only a browser that runs these applications.
The Google model seems more political than pragmatic. It centralizes the processing on servers instead of using the computing power of millions of computers and smartphones. The goal is to make the Internet the only center of activity and Google the center of the center.

AppEngine est a shared hosting service with online apps. Google's infrastructure to host online applications, can combine many services such as Maps.
The SDK can be integrated to Eclipse to create a development tool.

Dedicated operating systems

The operating system of Google, Chrome OS is designed for cloud computing, it is primarily intended to run Web applications.

Jolicloud is another system that as its name indicates, is designed for the Web. It is aimed as a netbook OS or can run for demonstration on Linux or Windows, in this case it is installed as an application.
It is also uninstalled from the Control Panel. It provides an interface to web applications but it saves files locally. The desktop is written in HTML 5.

The Cloud is a technological model that is best suited for computers with limited resources, such as netbooks and PC tablets.