When I recently traveled to Brussels to speak about Google’s vision for computing, I was pleased to learn how many of our ideas are shared at the European Commission. Both of us are betting on "cloud" computing, where we no longer are doing most of our computing on the desktop, but on the net, through webmail, blogs, posting photos and searching for information. Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding has recognized this phenomenon - and the fantastic prospects it offers for Europe. In a speech about a year and a half ago, she noted that she believes the "European software industry" will be able "to ride the rising wave of on-line software." Cloud computing, she added, "will place a new emphasis on open and interoperable systems that can be upgraded and joined together in networks" and "see a shift towards open standards and indeed open source software." Since the Commissioner's encouraging statements, much progress have been made. In the past, the best technology was launched in the workplace. Now, the best technology starts with consumers. Only a year ago, the costs of an internal video service were prohibitive. No longer. One of my teams is currently working on the next generation of video instant messaging that brings video-conferencing within the realm of any business. Here's a full copy of the presentation I made to European parliamentarians. The cloud will enable companies to save costs, particularly small businesses. In the past, businesses needed to make big investment in computers and software for accounting systems, customer management systems, email servers, maybe even phone or video conferencing systems. Today, all of those services are available via the network cloud, and you pay for it only as you use it. Sophisticated computer systems, previously the realm of larger companies, suddenly are available to all. When we at Google and other web-born companies such as Salesforce.com or Amazon built our robust platforms for our own services, we started to rent access to our data centres to other companies. Data centres involve huge fixed cost investments, but we're offering server capacity that you can scale as your business succeeds. I concluded with the message at how this move to online computing promises a radical transformation crucial to Europe’s future competitiveness. My audience at the European Parliament seemed to understand, particularly when I mentioned how Barack Obama used the net to propel forward his presidential campaign. European parliament elections are scheduled for June and many parliamentarians asked how they too could benefit from moving their campaigns into the cloud.Posted by Rian Liebenberg, Engineering Director
No comments :
Post a Comment
You are welcome to comment here, but your remarks should be relevant to the conversation. To keep the exchanges focused and engaging, we reserve the right to remove off-topic comments, or self-promoting URLs and vacuous messages