At the moment, most of us access programs and software held on our desktop PC but these programs could be held on another computer located somewhere completely different and accessible to us using our Internet browser. This idea is called cloud computing and is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon.com and Salesforce.com are battling to win the title of the dominant operating system on the web, each wanting to become the most prominent company in the rapidly emerging market for cloud-based computing.

To date, the current title holder is Amazon Web Services, which was launched in 2002 and provides program developers with access to computing power and storage within its own data centre.  In 2008, Google launched its App Engine service for web-based applications.  Google Apps allows developers to concentrate on creating an application and makes it easily accessible to many users.  Salesforce.com began selling its customer relationship management application on the internet in 2000.  In 2005, they opened up its platform (Force.com) to developers to create their own applications.   Not to be outdone,

Microsoft is a more recent entrant into the cloud computing battle, releasing its Azure platform at the start of this year. Some early applications are already running on Azure, including the popular WordPress blogging software.

Popular sites such as Facebook and Google Apps are examples of applications accessed via the Internet.  The cloud platform they are based on is becoming more important than the computer’s operating system that is accessing them.

Another good example is the Xero on-line accounting system.  Similar to MYOB which runs on your desktop, Xero runs on the Internet.  See http://www.xero.com/ for more details.

It’s looking like the desktop operating system is unlikely to ever disappear entirely.  Certainly, with the possibilities of cloud computing, the important of the operating system as we know it now will be reduced but it’s unlikely to disappear entirely.  A mixture of locally accessible tools and wider accessible tools held out in cyberspace on more powerful servers will give us the best of both worlds.  Computing is always evolving and with an increased use of cloud computing, it looks to us that the sky really is the limit!

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cloud_computing.svg
SalesForce.com – http://salesforce.com
Amazon Web Services – http://aws.amazon.com/
Google Apps – https://www.google.com/a/
Microsoft Azure – www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/