Cloud Computing Matters – because IT Connects all MY DEVICES

Roger McNamee, courtesy of Business Insider

An early Facebook Investor, Roger McNamee (well known co-Founder of Elevation Partners) gave an amazing talk recently offering his view of some of the biggest trends affecting the technology industry.

One result of that talk was a main stream news article titled “WHY SOCIAL IS OVER” born out of his remark “Social is “done”, it’s now a feature, don’t go do a social startup.” Many may debate that issue depending on the context of the conversation – but I believe another statement he made is relevant regardless of the conversation context:

…The fact that most people now have more than one device means the cloud is vital, because you want to have all your stuff on all your devices. It also means the old PC paradigm is dead, because the old PC paradigm means everything stored on one device, instead of everything in the cloud synced to many devices.

Click HERE to view the full article and a 10 min video of his presentation.

A large portion of the population (all age groups) now own wired (PC) and wireless (Mobile Device) computing devices.  This creates high demand for integrated “Cloud” Apps that synchronize data between all your devices with 24 x 7 reliability, plus provide continuity in the user experience regardless of device.

Apple is one company that has done a pretty good job of making this happen.  But Apple is also a completely “closed” system, controlling all standards, programming languages, protocols and even the software purchasing of its Apps.   This can severely limit creative competitive startups and even Apple admits they are still perfecting iCloud, their just recently introduced cloud offering.

Google, alternatively was “born in the cloud” and provides a 99.9% up time SLA, open systems compatibility and non-ownership of data as a general theme.  So their Cloud Apps (i.e. Google Apps For Business) work on virtually every device and platform (Apple, Windows, Linux etc).  Each Google service and application is architect-ed for the cloud from inception.  However, Google is still new to the world of creating the physical devices which access the cloud (i.e. Android based Smart-phones and Chrome based PC’s).

So the big three (Apple / Google / Microsoft) have specific expertise and unique competitive advantages – which one will ultimately become lead Gorilla in the “cloud computing” jungle?  I can’t say!  But I know today, Google offers the best APPS solutions for cloud environments.  I also believe, only companies that are blending a quality “cloud” solution like Google Apps For Business with their technology portfolio will be able to effectively compete, short term and long term.

A managed services approach to using Google Apps.

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