Forget software, look to clouds
Published: July 15, 2010
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For a very long time the software installed on your computer determined what you could do. You needed a word processor to write, a program like Excel to create a spreadsheet and special software to create slick presentations. In fact, you could have the best computer hardware in the world but unless it had the software you needed, you were out of luck.
Getting software was often a daunting task as well. It usually meant a trip to the computer store or waiting weeks while a physical disk was mailed to you. Once you determined that the program you wanted to run was compatible with your computer and you had the disks in hand, the software would have to be installed on your machine. Not only was the process a major hassle, it could be really expensive. A version of Photoshop — the popular image editing program — could cost as much as $700 and would most likely be outdated in five years.
All of that is rapidly changing, however. Now the software you have installed on your computer doesn’t matter much at all and the raw horsepower of your machine matters even less. So, what is the most important thing a computer user today needs? An Internet connection.
With the widespread availability of faster and faster Internet connections, tasks that once had to be performed by the computer in front of you can now be handled by computers on the other side of the earth. Other than a bare bones operating system and a web browser, your computer doesn’t actually need any software at all — it talks to other computers which do the work for you. In many ways, your computer is nothing more than a glorified keyboard and monitor.
This movement is referred to as “cloud computing” and whether you realize it or not, you’re probably already doing it. If you have an e-mail account through a web browser such as Google or Yahoo instead of an e-mail program installed on your machine such as Outlook, you’re already cloud computing. What a lot of people may not know is that you can do many other things, like creating new documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the same way.
The type of cloud computing that uses software hosted on another computer is known as “software as a service” and is often shortened to SaaS. This has many benefits. The most obvious, and in my opinion most important, is the cost savings. A copy of the latest version of Microsoft Office will cost anywhere from $100 to $500 and iWork for Mac will set you back $50 to $80 depending on where you buy it — but Google Docs, which can do all the same basic tasks, is free to anyone with an Internet connection.
