In Silicon Valley the next great evolution is called "Cloud Computing" and it signifies the migration of all information technology to the web browser(download www.google.com/chrome), where everything will become a "Web Service" distributed from the Internet.

Cloud computing is to turn all computer servers, storage and network resources in a datacentre into one big pool to deliver the applications and service levels required by customers.

Part of the plan involves virtual desktops - virtualised client machines that reside in the datacentre and are accessed remotely by users. Travelling workers will be able to download a virtual machine to a laptop or even to a USB memory stick and take their computing on the road.

Microsoft released its Hyper-V hypervisor for Windows Server 2008 and recently added a standalone version that can host guest virtual machines without an underlying version of Windows. Microsoft expects to build market share by targeting small-to-medium sized enterprises.

Microsoft will have a product aimed at Cloud Computing in the near future (2009). It will soon unveil a platform to run applications in the Internet which is called "Windows Azure".

The Windows Azure Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform, hosted in Microsoft data centres, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure's flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities.

Citrix gained the hypervisor technology needed to consolidate virtual machines on servers, and is also looking to become a major player in Cloud Computing and software-as-a-service.

The ultimate aim is to create a flexible service pool supporting independent operating systems that actually run the software applications. Currently, Cloud Computing services are included on Web 2.0 sites with the aid of "Ruby on Rails software".

Cheers Mark Bower

Director, NextWave.IT Ltd

www.nextwaveit.biz

enquiry@nextwaveit.biz