Cloud Computing Info

Desktops as a Service

Falling some somewhere between software and a platform are Cloud Desktops (also called a Cloud OS). These desktops run inside a browser and are accessible from any desktop with an internet connection.

A cloud desktop offers word processing, spreadsheets, development tools, networking tools and more. While relatively immature at this time, we can expect this market to grow significantly in the coming years, especially as more and more smart phones and ultraportables hit the real world.

Microsoft LiveMesh offers free storage, machine synchronization and a cloud based desktop.

Have you taken the leap into the cloud? If you don’t want to start with data centers in the sky, you can start with a desktop in the sky. Microsoft has offered Live Mesh for a while now. I wrote about live mesh on this blog. Live Mesh, even though it offers a desktop, is not much of a cloud OS. It’s more of a synch and remote desktop tool.

You could wait for Microsoft Azure. That’s MS’s services based, cloud OS. It’s still mostly fog at this point though. Fog, vapor? Get it?

Anyway, there are a few Cloud desktops that you can start using today.

I’m evaluating various web based desktops. A web desktop is a desktop in the cloud. So far, I have found three that I like. Today’s is iCloud by Xcerion. I’ll have a lot more info after my beta login is approved but from the videos, it looks like iCloud is the most advanced of all the Cloud OSes that I have looked at this far.

Here is a quick 3 minute video showing how to use the iCloud day planner.

And here is a little bit longer demo (5 minutes) of the OS itself.