There is no doubt that the cloud has changed the way we live and work. Further there is little doubt that the trend will continue and the cloud will simplify things for people and business with time. What the cloud is today, the evolution of the cloud and where it will go in future are all based on the history of the cloud. Instead of going in to all of that let’s take a look at the recent past, 5 major cloud computing trends in 2011 albeit with a difference…
Companies Used More Suppliers
Every business worth its while seeks to enhance efficiency and the cloud has taken many steps in that direction. Contrary to common belief that efficiency can be enhanced by reducing the number of supplier, cloud computing has busted this myth by helping companies to coordinate with a more diversified lot of suppliers thereby leveraging their ability to meet unforeseen circumstances and ensuing needs. The secret to this was the emergence of “community clouds”—an embryonic type of cloud computing that facilitates coordination between the activities of business partners over a secure platform.
Bootstrapping was the Way
The cloud helped individuals and companies with exciting ways to collaborate, develop products and test ideas very quickly and economically. The result? We saw a large number of startups mushrooming all over the place and an accelerated rate of enterprise development and creation. The speed at which people can determine what they want and how much they are willing to pay for it was perhaps one of the biggest gifts of the cloud.
Diminishing Language Barriers
Riding high on the wave of mobile penetration particularly in developing countries like India where the number of mobile users far exceeds the number of landline phone connections and myriad dialects and languages are spoken, cloud computing gave mobile-device users a level of speech recognition accuracy that is virtually on par with call center-based transcription services.
Language barriers began disappearing with free mobile applications that enabled people to cut across dialects and language through mobile devices where words of both parties are instantly translated into each other’s language using voice recognition and translation software.
Road trips Were Easier
Lost in unfamiliar territory, stuck in a traffic jam?…Cloud computing saved the day and improved the road trip for many a driver and travelers in 2011. Apps that let travelers see real time information about the speed and fuel usage of vehicles; send alerts about stops en route; notify users through text messages about road condition and hazards and select the best route helped make travel safe and easy.
App-infused Existence
Over the past year, the number of people who turned to their mobile phones as their preferred source of information grew dramatically. The need for information-on-the-go and the spawning of mobile applications have changed the way we look for and share information. Our existence per se became app-infused thanks to the power of the cloud…so we talked, sought feedback and basically lived in a dramatically different way.
The big players among cloud the forces were Google, Amazon and Microsoft and the emerging ones like AppZero, Enomaly, Long Jump and Vaultscape, Flexiant, Workbooks, CloudSigma and Cloudmore etc provided variety and flexibility in cloud computing to those looking for such solutions in 2011.
