Living (and Working) in the Cloud

Not to be confused with "head in the clouds," the "cloud" in "cloud computing" is a metaphor for the Internet based on how it is depicted in network diagrams. And cloud computing is really a term for computing services (like Salesforce.com or Google Docs) being delivered via the Internet with little or no requirement for software being installed on the user's computer.

Microsoft has long had dominance in business applications with its Office Suite and the suite's core applications: Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Microsoft makes a great deal of its revenue from Office software installed on millions of individual computers. Recently, there have been developing challenges from companies like Google, Zoho and Thinkfree with their online, i.e. "in the cloud," office-like applications. While none of those applications quite has the power of Office, they are a viable substitute for some people. And, they're free, for the most part.

Now Microsoft is stepping up to face the challengers with their own web version of Office. Modeled after Office 2007, the web applications apparently deliver a nearly identical experience. The direction of application software is becoming more and more SaaS (Software as a Service) as opposed to a (formerly) boxed product. While Google's Docs product isn't as robust as Office, it gets better and better. One of these days we might, finally, see new competition in this area of computing. After years of Microsoft's unchallenged dominance, that would be a good thing.