Computing, right back where we began.

Isn’t it interesting how trends tend to repeat themselves.

An interesting thought occurred to me today as we move into this new era of Cloud computing. Although the concept has been around for a while and Google has done an amazing job fully integrating offerings with these online solutions, the mystery of cloud computing still continues to baffle the general population. In an attempt to uncover part of the mystery, I will draw an interesting connection to the beginning of computing itself and show how we are right back where we started.

Mainframes : Connectivity

These large-scale behemoths first started appearing in the 1960s. They were primarily used in large corporations where they had a centralized mainframe system and wired terminals all over the building. The terminals did nothing but take user input, send it to the mainframe for processing then display the output from the mainframe. All data and files were centrally hosted on the mainframe which allowed that data to be easily accessed from any terminal in the building.

The Personal Computer : Isolation

In the 1980s the advent of the PC (Personal Computer) sprung to life and brought the ability to compute to the home desktop and eventually our laps. The gaming market opened up a whole new world and computers have been progressing to keeping up with the requirements of games ever since. These isolated machines primarily kept data files to themselves. Difficult to establish intra-networks and interim solutions for external data storage and transfer came about with disc drives, however these were often fragile, to small and often unreliable.

The PC and the Internet : Isolated-Connectivity

Beginning in the mid 1990s web servers began appearing and the world of connectivity began opening up again. The commercialization of what was then an international network, resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. Since the opening of this floodgate, there has been endless possibilities of what is what was possible with our computing power. Many companies like Microsoft have done a wonderful job at standardizing and normalizing those possibilities so that we can obtain a certain level of productivity. The standard of storing data files to these isolated work stations were unwittingly maintained. Whether it be lack of foresight or not understanding how to incorporate it into their business model, Microsoft, the kings of computing failed to recognize the next logical step back to where we began.

 Data Centers / Cloud Computing : Full Connectivity

No longer bound by wires, the internet infrastructure has connected every machine together. Since the mid 2000s the introduction of the dumbed-down netbook defines this next logical step well. These little machines don’t boast their computing power, lack of memory and hard drive space. Hence their name, they are built for the bare minimum requirements of simply being able to boot up and connect to the internet and take advantage of centralized systems such as Google’s application set. Google had accomplished an initiative to provide Cloud computing gives anyone with a Google account access to their ‘office productivity suite’ which contains word processing, spreadsheets and even presentation tools. These data files are not stored on the end-users machine, they are stored in the cloud (Google’s mainframe). Not only are these tools free, they need not be installed, but they also have inherent collaboration tools for sharing and real-time, multi-person editing. These documents are also saved on the Google servers which means that you are no longer bound to a single computer. Full circle back to the beginning.netbooks are simply terminals. Your files are accessible by any computer connected to the internet anywhere in the world! Obviously the ability to utilize these services are not limited to netbooks, but they are easier illustrate the full evolution back to the beginning.

In Conclusion

With all that said, Microsoft is now trying to play catch up and evolve their tools to the changing market demands that Google has created. I’ve been saying for years that Microsoft needed to move away from the off-the-shelf software to an online distribution model which has a reasonable subscription annual fee and has regular updates. In my opinion, unless Microsoft can pull their heads out and listen to gate keepers like myself, the end is in sight.

The general public still finds the transition from data storage on a single machine to ‘the cloud’ network to be a bit daunting. Hopefully this article illustrates that it’s not all that crazy and IS the direction we are going. Also, by now we have ALL had a personal experience with a hard drive crashing and data loss. Anything with moving parts WILL eventually see the end of it’s life cycle and die. It is not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Cloud computing is an effective solution to avoid those types of catastrophes because your documents are inherently ‘backed up’ on the Google servers.

For all of your other backup needs, may i suggest a solution that takes advantage of the internet and takes into account the two most important things I have defined for data backups. 1) Needs to be regular and frequent 2) Needs to be offsite (external hard drive solutions are going to be gone just as quick as the computer in cases of theft or natural disaster). I pointed out before that anything with moving parts will fail eventually. With that being understood it is important to account for that failure. For these reasons I am a huge promoter and affiliate of Mozy.com. For only $4.95/month (even cheaper if you pay for a year or two up front) for UNLIMITED and I mean TOTALLY UNLIMITED storage, Mozy is a little program that gets installed to your machine and after the initial backup of all your personal files including documents, family photos and everything else that would be devastating to lose. You set it and forget it (until you need to restore lost files that is). Mozy’s program will run in the wee hours of the morning so-as not to interrupt your computing experience (although it runs so lightly that most modern computers won’t even be affected by it’s background process) and only backs up the files that have changed. In the need of a data restore, you have many options, download the Mozy program to your new system and tell it where to put your backed up files or even request your files via the mail on data discs for a small handling and processing fee. Mozy will even send you and email if it notices that you haven’t been backing up for a couple days just to make sure that everything is running smoothly!

At $4.95/mo, Mozy is the cheapest insurance you will ever have. As individuals we are gathering, literally creating data at an incredible rate. What a shame it would be to lose digital family photos when they could have been backed up and secure. What a peace of mind it would bring to know that you are bulletproof and you data is secure. At this moment, I could tell you three tear-jerking stories of personal friends and family who I suggested get signed up with Mozy and within the matter of a few months, their hard drives crashed and the data was unrecoverable. There was no need for this type of tragedy. Please feel free to use my Mozy.com affiliate link (so that i get credit for your registration) and I will be more than happy to assist you with any questions and even setup if you would like!

My Mozy Affiliate Link: https://mozy.com/?ref=3f9a896b&m=5&kbid=41077&mcr=1

Love you all!