PushingJelly

For years now I have been banging on about using the net as an application delivery platform and storage back-end for ‘thin’ connected devices, where the device in your pocket, on your lap or desk and in the living-room attached to your TV is merely a window onto your data and applications.

Devices that have the ability hand over to one and other without interruption of service when for example; editing a document, watching a movie or listening to music.

Documents, photo’s, movies and other multimedia records are stored in a database run by a service provider, files are only used when exporting to other systems. Space is limited only by one’s ability to pay for it (or view advertising) and everything is robust because the user doesn’t manage data in any way – no need to backup – the service Provider does that. If you lose a device then you buy a new one and carry on.
Storage is efficient, no file system overhead and there’s no filing involved – everything is found by search or browse filters, the ultimate roaming profile.

If you run out of batteries you can access your environment somewhere else while your device recharges.

When you are out and you take movies or photo’s they are immediately available to home because the files are already on the shared storage, no uploading.

Voice, video and text communication turns up wherever you are logged in and according to what ever capability the device has. Voice comms is gatewayed onto the PSTN, Text is compatible with everyone and video is based on open standards so we can all play along nicely.

Areas of your database are can be made available to others for “filesharing” … and so on, and on.

All this is perfectly feasible and most if not all is already available separately today.

The cloud storage is already here. Just look at Google/Microsoft/Zoho etc. Loads of companies are offering remote web accessed storage and applications. Flickr offer picture storage and video storage is provided by Google again in the shapes of Google Video and the venerable YouTube.

Motorola have for several years now shown the hand over technology for their phones and other devices.

Lastly a fruit company close to our hearts has hardware in the office, on our laps, in the living room and in the hands and pockets of millions of users, all of it is more than capable this functionality and more.

The potential for this all is limited only by a few factors:

• Trust – in the ISPs and systems
• Comms – Speed, latency and quality of the connection
• Will – Someone has to break the catch22 of investment vs risk

Trust
People are very twitchy about trusting their documents on the net. Strange when most people read their mail over open connections but they won’t store a letter to their kids school on an encrypted internet backup. What we need is a company we can trust, one that doesn’t seem to have an agenda where our data is concerned.

Comms
We have all been waiting years for the telcos to get their finger out and ratify and deploy WiMax – It has been “about 5 years away” for as long as I can remember their being such a thing as WiMax and still we are no nearer.
High speed, high quality, low latency and ubiquitous comms links are a holy grail of the computer industry. it is this (IMHO) which is the biggest stumbling block to progress.

Will (power)
With all new technologies and systems that hit the market the element of risk is huge. The amount of investment a company has to front-up to get a big idea off the ground is immense – a huge risk and it normally takes a real visionary to drive it through.

Although I would love to see a world where the populous starts and finishes their day looking at an Apple Logo, Apple and Mr Jobs have a good track record of taking loads of good ideas and turning them into great products, however I am not sure they are up to this.

The risk is just too big, Apple is too closed and it’s share holders are just too risk adverse for this.

I suspect that the only company able to do this will be Google. They have enormous wealth, a vast amount of data centre storage and processing power already on stream, Cloud applications already deployed, a mobile operating system under development that they are licensing to anyone who will listen (this is too big for the hardware to be controlled by one company) that could be adapted to other platforms such as set-top-boxes or gaming systems. They have video distribution tech, huge amounts of bandwidth and are bidding in the next spectrum auction.
Google already know everything about you anyway (whether you know it or not) so who better to keep in the circle of trust.
Lastly, Google have the sheer force of will and momentum to get this going. They will beta it for a year or so until the hardware is ready and then all hands to the pumps.

Mark my words, the future belongs to the cloud, the cloud will belong to Google.