Tag Archives: mobile devices

Cloud Computing Versus SaaS

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As our world becomes more and more connected, the terms used to describe online services blur into abstraction. In this article, I’ll clarify the terms “cloud computing” versus “software as a service,” often referred to as SaaS. In some ways, it’s like describing two sides of the same coin. However, there are some clear distinctions, along with risks and rewards to keep in mind.

The Internet is increasingly being referred to as the cloud. One of the earliest mentions of cloud computing is in the paper The Self-governing Internet: Coordination by Design published by MIT Professors Sharon Eisner Gillett and Mitchell Kapor in 1996. Readers of a certain age will remember one of Kapor’s other ideas, a product called Lotus 1-2-3. Regardless, historically the central computers that run the nation’s telephone network were often diagrammed on flowcharts as a cloud. The intricacies of networked computers that comprise the Internet are so complex that the term has been co-opted for use in our modern society.

In the early days of computers, users rented time on a mainframe computer. A few decades later, we all became accustomed to having our own personal computers on our desk, upon which we installed shrink-wrapped software. We became responsible for upgrading our computers, software, and backing up our data. As often happens in life, though, things are going full circle where we’re returning to the days of renting time on someone else’s computer. Instead of a single mainframe computer though, today we may utilize a bank of computers residing in a data center in an undisclosed location. Instead of being relegated to working only at our desk, today we often use mobile devices to carry out tasks unimaginable just a few years ago.

In general, cloud computing can be thought of as any instance where you’re using a computer that resides outside of your physical location. Most users encounter cloud computing in the form of software as a service. You might pay a fee for the service, such as QuickBooks Online, Salesforce.com, or Microsoft’s Office 365, or you may pay in a nonmonetary fashion through an advertising-supported and/or information-gathering models, such as Gmail, Mint, or Facebook.

With all of these applications, you’re relying on software installed and maintained on remote computers. Most often SaaS is delivered via your web browser, so long as you have a connection to the Internet, you’re able to carry out tasks that may be business or personal in nature. With this background in mind, I can provide some distinctions between cloud computing and software as a service:

  • Cloud computing gives you access to an environment that you can customize or build out to suit your needs. With SaaS, you’re limited to the features and capabilities written into the software, but cloud computing offers the ability to increase server capacity or storage space on demand.
  • Cloud computing offers elasticity, meaning your resources and costs can increase or decrease with your demands. SaaS typically involves a set fee per user, per month, so costs and the functionality offered tend to be fixed.
  • In short, cloud computing is highly customizable, whereas SaaS offers more of one-size-fits-all approach.

Some examples of what may be considered pure cloud computing include:

  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) – This service allows you to store and retrieve an unlimited amount of data, at anytime of day, from any computer connected to the Internet.
  • Microsoft’s Windows Azure – This service provides virtual servers that can be used for application development and delivery.
  • Rackspace.com — Similar to Windows Azure, Rackspace.com provides servers for hire, but with a wider array of operating systems to choose from.

A primary benefit to cloud computing is that users outsource the care and maintenance of servers to firms that specialize in that capability. When demand warrants, new servers can be brought online in minutes, rather than the days required when a company maintains its own data center. Any sort of computer-based application can be hosted on cloud-based computers, from a website or shopping cart to custom programs for internal use. Thus, with cloud computing, the user is generally responsible for maintaining the applications on the server, while the hosting companies maintain the underlying physical equipment and operating system.

For SaaS, end users are removed from maintaining both the application and the server equipment. Benefits of SaaS versus desktop programs include:

  • Applications, such as QuickBooks Online, allow you to access accounting records from anywhere in the world, instead of from specific computers within your office.
  • New features appear in the software automatically, so there’s no need to purchase a software upgrade to be physically installed on each of your computers.
  • Your data is backed up automatically, so a local hard drive crash won’t affect your data.

Despite all of the benefits that cloud computing and SaaS provide, there are still risks to consider and manage:

  • Consider the recent situation with megaupload.com, where certain purported illegal actions by a subset of users caused everyone using the service to lose access to data. Think about a toddler having a certain bodily function in a public swimming pool – everyone has to suddenly get out of the water. Similarly, actions by one or more rogue users can cause unexpected and dramatic disruptions for everyone else sharing a cloud-based resource.
  • Both cloud computing and SaaS involve trust, in that you’re trusting an organization to hold up its end of the bargain. Intuit, maker of QuickBooks, last year experienced a spate of outages that caused business interruptions for users of their myriad online services.
  • A service you trust and rely on could suddenly change hands, such as Facebook’s recent acquisition of Instagram. You may then be forced to find a new service provider if you have philosophical differences with the new owner of a tool that you’ve relied on or if customer service levels start to slip to unacceptable levels.
  • If you stop paying for the service, access to your data can be immediately terminated. However, many providers offer a grace period. For instance, if you cancel your QuickBooks Online account, your data is maintained for a year, should you decide to resubscribe to the service.

Author: David H. Ringstrom, CPA
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Game Power In the Cloud

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We can shop on our phones and read magazines on our tablets. But playing high-end video games on a mobile device has been out of the question. That might be about to change. OnLive, a Silicon Valley start-up, on Thursday plans to release software that will let people play the richest, most graphically intense games on Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as on Amazon’s Kindle Fire and other devices based on Google’s Android software.

In the past, these games have been far beyond the relatively anemic computing power of such devices, requiring the horsepower of a PC or a console. But OnLive runs all of the games on its service entirely on powerful server computers in its data centers and delivers them over the Internet, through so-called cloud computing.Other companies are trying to do the same thing, including Gaikai, a start-up based in Los Angeles. If they succeed, a shift to cloud gaming could have big implications for the incumbent powers in the video game business, mainly the console makers Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. That is because running games in data centers means that consoles in the home can be far less powerful, relieving consumers of the need to buy a new generation of hardware in the future.At the same time, moving gaming into the cloud could help push the boundaries of what cloud computing can do, even on relatively low-powered mobile devices.

Everything from FarmVille on Facebook to data backup services like Apple’s iCloud to Netflix’s streaming movie service are considered cloud applications. But playing high-end games in the cloud presents a much bigger technical challenge because of the importance of eliminating any lag between the moment a player takes an action in a game on his or her device, and when the game responds on the screen. Even split-second delays can turn serious gamers off.

OnLive says it has solved this problem by figuring out a method of efficiently packaging video images of a live game that it delivers over the Internet, and that allows for instantaneous response to actions by players as they control the movement of characters within a game.In a recent demonstration in Seattle, Steve Perlman, the chief executive and founder of OnLive, showed a collection of well-known high-end games, including L.A. Noire and Unreal Tournament 3, on an iPad, Android phones and a Kindle Fire.Although the games were running on computers in an OnLive data center in Northern California, they responded immediately when a player moved a character around. Some games on the service have been adapted to respond to fingers on a touch screen, but many work better with a $50 wireless controller sold by OnLive. That’s cheaper than buying a traditional game console, which starts at about $150. “It’s amazing the performance he’s getting out of all these tablets,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering Group.Mr.

Perlman said OnLive would also soon introduce a service that let people run a full Windows desktop on iPads and other mobile devices, including Web browsers that can show Web sites with Flash, an Adobe graphics technology that is not otherwise available on iPads. Last year, OnLive introduced an earlier iteration of its service, letting people play games first on PCs, Macs and television sets through a small $99 device it calls the MicroConsole. Mr. Perlman predicted that the growing capabilities of the cloud, along with the high costs of introducing a new console, would lead to big changes in the business. Hardware makers can lose billions of dollars on new game systems before eventually recouping their investments through royalties from game sales. “It’s our view that probably there won’t be another console and that this current generation is the last,” Mr. Perlman said. “The economics can’t support it anymore.”However, even people who believe strongly that cloud gaming will become an important part of the market say they think that prediction is an overstatement.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said cloud gaming was still too new for serious gamers to switch their habits. Internet connections in some areas are not fast and reliable enough for gamers to depend on a cloud gaming service all the time. “Realistically, there’s one more” generation of consoles coming, Mr. Pachter said. “It will take a while for people to trust the cloud and adapt.”Nintendo has already announced plans for a new machine, the Wii U, expected to be released next year. But Sony and Microsoft don’t appear to be in any rush to introduce new consoles. It has been five and six years, respectively, since the companies introduced the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and neither company is talking about plans for a new system. Console makers used to introduce new game systems every five to six years. “We’ve got a lot of life left in the current generation of PlayStation with PS3,” said Patrick Seybold, a spokesman for Sony’s United States games division.

Some cloud gaming proponents say they believe future consoles are likely to embrace the technology, rather than risk being replaced by it. “Anyone making consoles for the future would be crazy not to have cloud gaming support,” said David Perry, Gaikai’s C.E.O. Support from game publishers can make or break OnLive and it isn’t clear how eager some of the more prominent ones are to join the service, which has a variety of payment plans for consumers, from a $10 monthly rental to an option for buying games for $2 to $50. The industry’s biggest blockbuster, the Call of Duty series from Activision Blizzard, isn’t available on the service, for example.

An executive of one publisher working with OnLive, Jason Kingsley, the chief executive of Rebellion, predicted that most game makers would warm to cloud gaming services over time. “There will always be some people who say, ‘We don’t want to engage in this, it’s horrible,’ ” Mr. Kingsley said. “I can’t see why it shouldn’t be part of the mix.”

Author: NICK WINGFIELD
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Making The Call On Enterprise VoIP

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IP telephony encompasses a set of technologies enabling voice, data and video over existing IP-based LANS, WANs and the internet. Using voice over IP (VoIP) as the enabling technology to transport phone calls allows firms to eliminate legacy circuit-switched (TDM) systems and lower equipment costs by converging applications onto a single infrastructure, while browser-based interfaces can simplify system management. Software upgrades are also much easier to implement, as are adds, moves and changes (AMCs).

At the same time, convergence allows the introduction of a wide-range of value-added applications via unified communications (UC). As such, many IP telephony and VoIP projects now form part of broader UC strategies, which might encompass any combination of instant messaging, presence, conferencing (Web, audio, video), unified messaging, social networking and other applications. Although the UC market remains nascent, the technology promises to increase productivity and teamwork, as well as customer responsiveness by integrating IP telephony with instant messaging and presence, or by extending call history and directories to mobile devices, for example.

Despite these benefits, independent research firm Nemartes found that in 2010, only 17% of companies had fully deployed VoIP technology. The bulk of those were small and mid-sized businesses as larger firms continue to scrutinize the business case and deploy the technology in a tactical manner – e.g. to replace TDM systems that have reached end-of-life, equip new ‘greenfield’ locations, or to meet the needs of specific job functions or applications. It also found that many firms fail to budget for voice quality management and monitoring tools, and often have to spend more on the LAN upgrade than they originally budgeted for. This is either because they didn’t evaluate the LAN at all or because they didn’t run the appropriate baseline network assessments to determine the actual upgrades required.

Preparing for VoIP

Making the transition from traditional voice communications equipment, or POTS (plain old telephony service), to a converged infrastructure supporting IP telephony is a complex task. Legacy communications infrastructure is focused on transporting data from one point to another successfully and, to a certain degree, in light of response times – i.e. how quickly the user receives the information they need. With IP telephony however, the question is whether the network is capable of handling VoIP traffic and delivering the quality of experience the end user demands.

It is therefore common practice to rollout VoIP to a small subset of the organization first in order to understand whether the required call quality can be delivered. To provide a numerical indication of the perceived quality of the media (e.g. voice or video) during live testing, IT operations teams use Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and R-value score calculations. Historically, both have been quite subjective as they are based on the quality as perceived by the end user. As such, IP SLA and Proxy Ping are two logical tests that are used to measure response time from an end user perspective. As the MOS ratings for codecs and other transmission impairments are now more well known, estimated MOS values can be computed and displayed based on measured impairments (delay and packet loss).

The estimated MOS value is designated as ‘MOS-CQE’ (Mean Opinion Score; Conversational Quality, Estimated) by the ITU. IP SLA tests use this computation to provide MOS and R-Value metrics. In addition to call quality metrics, response time tests help show the readiness of the network to support an application with little tolerance for latency and jitter, while 90th and 95th percentile reports can also be run to ensure that a VoIP rollout goes smoothly.

It is also important to assess whether the network is sized properly in respect of accommodating rising volumes of voice traffic and how it might impact traffic relating to other business applications. This is achieved either by adding more IP phones or employing call generators (aka ‘probes’) to increase call loads and then monitoring the network for changes in performance. It is likely that quality of service (QoS) parameters will need to be adjusted – e.g. by increasing QoS queues – to ensure that all the different types of applications running over the network have the appropriate amounts of bandwidth associated with them, while more bandwidth may be required for specific sections of the network.

Establishing baselines

Reporting and having the visibility to test, monitor and validate current infrastructure performance as VoIP is rolled out is essential to long-term success. Reporting on performance, utilization and capacity enables IT operations teams to baseline their current network performance with IPSLA testing employed to assess the impact of VoIP. Having established a baseline of ‘normal’ performance levels, it is then possible to dynamically set accurate thresholds and implement alerts that are issued the moment (or even before) performance degrades or deviates from normal.

Scheduled and on-demand reporting delivers the key performance indicators (KPIs) that, when combined with call quality metrics, provide visibility of the impact of VoIP on both business-application and network performance. For IP telephony, the critical measurements relating to network performance are:

· Packet loss – the discarding of data packets in a network when a device is overloaded and cannot accept any incoming data at a given moment

· Latency – a measure of time delay experienced in a system

· Jitter –a measure of the variability over time of the packet latency

Any increase in latency, jitter, or packet loss will be noticed almost immediately by the caller in the form of static, echo or intermittent sound. In the worst case, the call will drop out altogether. In addition, CDR (call data record) and RTCP (Real-time Transport Control Protocol) based reports can deliver rich statistics for each completed call leg, again enabling call quality measurements to be compared against baselines, and threshold-based alerts issued accordingly.

Maintaining full visibility

Once a full-scale VoIP rollout is live, IT operations teams will continue to need full visibility into both the performance of the IP telephony infrastructure, and that of the network and the other business applications being supported. This means collecting data including network KPIs such as QoS queue utilization, key statistics for the call manager server, implementing IP SLA tests to measure end to end latency, and gather call data via RTCP to understand actual call MOS, Jitter and latency.

Having the ability to link and graph IP telephony call quality metrics with key network performance indicators and then reporting on key call manager statistics for example, means it is possible to see CPU performance, memory usage, interface performance, call per second, number of registered phones, call manager heart beat, as well as the current call for today with MOS scoring, jitter and latency.

With all of this data in one place, normalized and consistent, IT operations teams can easily recognize when call manager performance suffers and assess the impact on call quality and success. When a sudden spike in data traffic impacts on call quality, full visibility ensures that the IT operations team is able to instantly identify the application consuming bandwidth and resolve the issue accordingly. For example, by determining that a user is streaming a non-business related video and hogging bandwidth, the IT manager can quickly contact the user and ask them to discontinue or block access.

Why an appliance makes sense

In a converged network environment supporting IP telephony and UC applications, IT operations teams must collate an ever-increasing volume of performance data – such as server metrics, application flows, network metrics and voice and video quality metrics – from a burgeoning number of network elements if they are to gain an understanding of how key services are performing.

Given the limited scalability of legacy performance management tools, an appliance-based solution is recommended because it eliminates the need for additional software, hardware, or external databases, and can be used in standalone or peered configurations in order to quickly provide reports on any indicator, device, or application to be monitored. Furthermore, the proprietary or technology-specific performance management tools available today are unable to deliver the required level of visibility because data must be acquired manually and cannot be overlaid to gain a single view.

The ability to analyze both network and VoIP performance from one system enables faster troubleshooting and problem resolution, and better coordination between network operations teams and telephony teams. Crucially, the ability to troubleshoot issues effectively before they impact on service or network performance means quality of experience and network availability can be assured for all services.

Author: Peter Cruz
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SMB Trends For Hosted VoIP Services

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Here are the results from a recent Virtual PBX survey that asked more than 600 SMBs about virtual office use — along with the perceived effectiveness, costs, and technology needed to support a virtual business.

The most popular drivers for using a virtual office included: employees’ flexibility (61%), business cost savings (54%), geographic distance of staff (42%) and the desire to reduce commute time, cost and pollution (41%). More 60% of respondents work from a virtual office almost all the time, while 27% work two to 10 days a month outside the office.

The survey showed that virtual workers are apparently addicted to cellphones — 87% survey takers use mobile devices for business communications. Also popular are landlines, used by 49%; VoIP phone lines, used by 25%; and computer-based VoIP soft phones, used by 20% of respondents.

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Mobility Seeds The Cloud

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We’ve learned a lot about mobility since the early days of this decade when businesses and consumers alike got their first taste of 3G networks. The shift from 2G voice-centric networks to 3G data-driven networks has made it clear that the real “killer apps” are mobile applications – transforming mobile devices into extensions of ourselves and our day-to-day lives.

Consumers and enterprise alike are starting to see the incredible potential for combining mobile applications with the power of cloud computing. Juniper Research estimates the market for cloud-based mobile applications will increase 88% annually over the next five years, growing from $400 million in 2009 to an estimated $9.5 billion in 2014, as users demand truly anytime, anywhere access to their personal and business information. As data networks continue to expand, the challenge for our industry is determining how best to move the cloud closer to consumers and offer the type of experiences tomorrow’s users will expect.

For cloud computing to truly take hold on mobile devices, two things need to align: stronger, faster mobile data connections delivering data to mobile devices and mobile technology capable of efficiently and effectively processing data, applications and services.

For network operators, rolling out complementary technologies such as HSPA+ and LTE will support the types of data capabilities necessary for true cloud computing. To date, 81 HSPA+ operators have launched networks in 48 countries; there are seven LTE networks operating and 113 LTE network commitments in 46 countries. Evolving today’s 3G networks will allow them to robustly meet the demand for data-intensive applications such as high-definition video streaming, peer-to-peer gaming and contextual awareness.

Hardware advances are as critical as the overall network to the overall success of cloud computing. Mobile devices must be able to process the data coming through the pipe efficiently and effectively in order to make the experience useful to people. Savvy mobile users will not be satisfied with slow performance or short battery life, and innovations such as hardware-accelerated multimedia engines, more efficient power management techniques and multi-core architectures will all be key to ensuring that devices are able to fully take advantage of the newly broadened data pipe.

Gartner expects smart phone sales to top PCs in 2012. Companies who prioritize developing mobile computing for the cloud and provide compelling experiences across multiple platforms will be at the forefront of the mobile tidal wave. It’s worth noting that without the applications that fully take advantage of cloud computing technology, the trend is hardly worth driving for its own sake. It’s the new services and applications on the horizon that makes the trend toward more advanced device capabilities and network technologies compelling.

One area where mobile and cloud computing converge is augmented reality, which allows computer-generated content to be superimposed over a live camera view of the real world. Qualcomm recently unveiled a platform and software development kit that allows developers to build new applications that bring online and offline worlds together. With the ability to blend location-based data and online apps, augmented reality will offer entirely new experiences for users and create new opportunities for developers.

Mobile devices and cloud computing also are being looked for improving health care. Sensor technologies can be combined with mobile devices to deliver ongoing monitoring and tracking, as well as GPS location and emergency communications. Mobile devices also enable patients in remote areas to access physicians and services that were previously unavailable.

Whether it’s leveraging sensors and location data to know where we are and what we are doing and translating that information into a valuable service, or allowing mobile devices to discover and talk to each other to enable a new dimension of social networking, or simply delivering the best possible experience browsing the mobile Internet…these are the challenges that the industry must overcome as it works to “move the cloud” and bring it closer than ever to people’s daily lives.

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Cloud Computing For The SMB

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Top Tips For Decision-Making & Deployment

If your small business is considering adopting cloud computing, you’re not alone. A recent survey of 1,000 small to midsized businesses by researchers at MarketBridge found that 44% of respondents had already deployed at least one cloud-based application. In addition, more than 70% of those surveyed planned to move at least one new application to the cloud within six months.

Why are smaller companies so attracted to cloud computing? In the MarketBridge study, 38% of SMBs said they were looking to the cloud to help support their growing use of mobile devices. Others cite cost savings, reliability, and ease of use as key factors in their decisions to move to the cloud.

If your small business is thinking about or planning a move toward cloud computing, experts offer a number of tips to help the transition go smoothly.

Start Small

According to Tyler Roye, senior executive officer at hosting company mindSHIFT, “Testing and incrementally moving to the cloud seems to be the best way to go. Finding a few things you can do will help you increase your internal confidence in the cloud.” Once companies (and their employees) are familiar with cloud computing and see the benefits it brings, they’re often more willing to expand their use of the cloud.

Where should companies start? Paul Chisholm, mindSHIFT chairman and CEO, notes, “Moving email and general services to the cloud is fairly easy.” Once companies are comfortable with cloud-based email, they can move on to more complex cloud-based applications.

Look Beyond TCO

“It’s fairly well documented that cloud computing reduces your total cost of ownership vs. on-premises options,” observes Robert Israch, director of global demand generation at NetSuite (www.netsuite.com). “However, that is an incomplete picture of how it can enable your business.” Instead, Israch advises SMBs that are considering new cloud services to look at total return on investment to get a better picture.

When deciding whether to implement or expand their use of the cloud, he recommends that SMBs also factor in “time and money spent upgrading different systems, maintaining hardware and servers, [and] integrating and patching together different business systems, and productivity benefits related to having access to real-time reporting and dashboards and with giving your team anytime, anywhere system access.” By evaluating all of these factors, SMBs can get a better idea of the benefits offered by pilot projects and decide whether to expand cloud computing to additional departments and applications.

Manage The Cultural Adjustment

Sudden change can be scary for employees–particularly if they are being asked to give up applications they are familiar with and try something new. According to Google’s Small Business Blog, “Internal communication about the change of service and in-house training sessions will help staff to feel more comfortable using the new technology.”

Small businesses that introduce cloud computing gradually, giving employees time to grow comfortable with new applications and listening to their feedback, find that their cloud computing deployments are more successful.

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Virtualization to Link Personal Mobile Devices to Enterprises

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Bitzer Mobile this week introduced its Enterprise Virtualized Mobility (EVM) technology, which isolates corporate data from personal data on employee-owned mobile devices and enables secure remote access to enterprise data on these devices.

The company is addressing the issue of employees bringing their own devices to work and wanting access to enterprise information; IT managers have had difficulty in determining how many to support and have to worry about security and provisioning, said Bitzer CEO Naeem Zafar. “We solve that problem using virtualization,” he said.

EVM features a “virtual container,” called Enterprise Virtual App Container (EVC), deployed on mobile devices as a native application. It is controlled by enterprise IT personnel who can deliver proper data and access to the device of the employee’s choosing.

Bitzer uses a Mobile Virtualization Layer, or MVL, to connect to existing remote access infrastructure to provide mobile data transport, offline synchronization, native views, and user authentication services to mobile devices. Also, the virtualization layer enables access to enterprise applications from a single icon on mobile devices. MVLs can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. “MVL essentially is an alternative presentation layer,” for existing applications, Zafar said.

Bitzer plans to write MVLs for standard applications such as Oracle applications. Developers can write MVLs using technologies such as HTML, PHP, .Net, or Java.

EVC is to be deployed as a native application on devices such as iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows, and Android, with initial support for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. An Admin Control Panel centrally manages users and devices. IT personnel can enforce authentication and security policies and provision, as well as wipe applications and record usage statistics.

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Bill Clinton: Cloud Computing Will Lead to a Smarter, Better World

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Even Bill Clinton is a fan of the cloud! From the New York Times:

Back in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was president, cell phones weighed five pounds and no one dreamed of using them to do anything besides make phone calls.

Now, they’re used to connect us for more powerful causes — like raising a billion dollars for Haiti, President Clinton said at the Dreamforce 2010 conference in San Francisco Wednesday. And that’s largely because they’re hooked up to something far more powerful than the old-fashioned telephone network — they’re connected to the cloud.

One reason why mobile devices have gotten so small and yet so powerful is that they draw on their Internet connections to access far more sophisticated software than they could run locally – a set of technologies known as cloud computing that shift heavy-duty computing power from local devices to remote servers.

Businesses, governments, and nonprofits are all getting on board the cloud. And Clinton’s a fan, too.

The data-crunching capabilities of cloud computing, in particular, promise to make the efforts of nongovernmental organizations to better society far more effective, Clinton argued.

“It’s one thing to go into a country with the intent to help out,” Clinton said. “It’s an altogether different thing to sit around and have to evaluate the information, and find out what worked.”

Salesforce, a provider of customer relationship management software which organized the event at which Clinton spoke, is one company that is already using cloud computing to help nonprofits around the world. By providing organizations with a cloud-based service that can manage various aid groups across the world, it’s making them more efficient and helping developing countries build up their infrastructure.

The utility of cloud computing isn’t limited to helping nonprofit organizations and countries in dire need of assistance. It’s weaving itself through our daily lives, from better smartphones to smart electricity grids that operate more efficiently. Cloud computing is opening up a lot of possibilities to, simply enough, just make things work.

“And when you build these things that just work, good things happen,” Clinton said.

Cloud computing has a good number of prominent evangelists. Netscape cofounder turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a big cloud cheerleader, thinks cloud computing can finally get rid of his wallet and attach all his financial information to his phone. Google’s Eric Schmidt is one of the biggest proponents of cloud computing, and is trying to push Google to include the cloud in just about everything they can do make things just work. That even includes cars that drive themselves.

“It’s amazing that people drive cars, computers should be the ones driving cars,” Schmidt said at a recent tech-industry conference. “It seems to me like a bug that cars were invented before computers.”

Add President Bill Clinton to the list of cloud-computing evangelists that think the world will be a better place once everything is connected to the Internet of things. There’s an enormous amount of potential to make it happen, but it still isn’t clear how long it will take to get there. Despite being around for some time, cloud computing has only seen widespread adoption and evangelism in recent years.

There is basically no limit to what can be plugged into the cloud. Intel, one of the leading chipmakers in the world, demoed a billboard that downloaded advertisements and changed them dynamically at the Intel Developer Forum earlier this year. It also showed off an Internet-connected treadmill that could help users keep track of how much exercise they are getting in and helping them manage their fitness schedule. Intel’s Atom chipset, among others, will ensure that just about everything can include a computer — and be connected to the Internet.

But imagine this: an electricity grid that automatically detects when electric cars are plugged in and distributes the load so it doesn’t overload the grid. Healthcare systems that cut administrative costs and paperwork to almost nothing. A mobile phone that does, well, everything. It seems like a pretty good thing to be working toward.

Clinton seems to think so, as well.

“We’re past the why, we’re in the how now — trying to figure out how we can turn our good intentions and this technology into positive changes.”