Most cloud computing has been at the business level, so Microsoft had to take it right to the consumer, which is not a bad idea. While there are a lot of pundits this morning talking about live mesh, and what it means to you, there are some things to know about that might keep this more difficult for users. Great for laptops that are being searched and seized at the border of the USA, interesting for people who have more than 5 gigs of stuff they want to store off.
Some cool screen shots can be found here. The picture below is from ZDNet. We agree with ZDNet, there are immediately useful things that people can do, which is a major plus when rolling out anything.
Many uses and applications are apparent here, storage space is not realistic, worth it if they offer a premium service in line with mp3tunes.com, where you pay for the storage beyond the initial five gigabytes that they give you.
The best demo is over on channel 10, you will need the silverlight plugin to watch the video, but the video is worth watching if you want to get a good overview.
Have you ever had to email yourself a file or found that you had four different versions of the same document on four different PC’s? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you had a synchronized copy of all your important files on each of your devices and access to them at any time via nothing more than a web browser? Source: Channel 10
The most interesting comments come from Robert Scoble, which is not surprising either. He goes on to state and we agree that:
It also gives key insights into how Microsoft is going to keep Windows relevant and keep us all from sliding into a Web that doesn’t rely much on the underlying operating system. Will Microsoft succeed in that? Well, they better otherwise we’re all very close to washing Microsoft out of our hair: forever. Source: Robert Scoble
Microsoft needs to succeed here, they need to move past the operating system as everything to everyone and into the next generation of computing where local storage is about dead, network or cloud storage and operations are what matters. While most everyone would like to see a stripped down OS that is simply an on ramp to the Internet where work is done (think extremely thin computing here), this is not a bad start, and with the right audience, the regular average consumer.
It is good to see Microsoft taking this step, but as with all things, it will boil down to adoption, will the proletariat use the system. Will the middle class adopt it, what are the legal ramifications of having all your stuff loaded into a Microsoft data center, how can it be broken, what are the security implications, and a whole host of other questions that we should be rightfully asking. While we look at data breaches in the web 2.0 space, you can bet that hackers are already at work with the beta trying to figure out how all this can be subverted. With EMI going after mp3tunes.com, how will Microsoft fair in the same space, or are they new lawsuit bait with deeper pockets?
Lots of questions, many that can not be answered any time soon, the first thing that needs to happen though is adoption.
Keywords: Microsoft, live mesh, channel 10, emi, mp3tunes.com, lawsuit, adoption, money, premium service, storage, cloud computing, money
