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Clouds that Can Move Mountains
Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Today, new mobile services are announced regularly that are one step away from magic.
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Major players have begun to take the idea of a “cloud OS” seriously. |
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processing power in today’s cloud
services, those dreams may soon
become cloud-based reality. Major
players, including Apple and Google
have begun to take the idea of a
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In a news release January 24th, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) revealed they will use an Android-based smartphone to control a spaceship in orbit later this year. The end goal is to create a cloud service that allows mobile devices on earth to control spaceships, among other large, impossibly expensive devices. And since Android is open source, the outcome of the research might enable developers to create satellite control apps. Real-time photos from space anyone?
Clouds on the Horizon
The future of cloud computing may lie in
the past. People have been tossing
around the idea of “thin
clients” (monitors and input devices
hooked into a central, local, mainframe)
practically since the dawn of
computing, but with the advances in
storage, security, reliability and
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“cloud OS” seriously, with Apple filing
patents for a “Method and apparatus
for administering the operating system
of a net-booted environment” and
Google soon to release its Chrome OS,
an operating system who’s only
application is a web browser. These
operating environments store all of
their data and run all of their
applications in the cloud, with the
hardware merely serving to input and
display data. By leveraging cloud
services, a future cloud OS could store
and process data with power well
beyond the meager hardware used to
access the cloud.
How long until these developments trickle down to mobile devices? It’s impossible to tell, but as demand for storage and processing power increase, it is clear that cloud services will increasingly provide the solution for today’s growing mobile needs.
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