Cloud Computing: The Second Step of the Software Revolution

Forbes website recently published an article entitled "The second step in the software revolution: turning to cloud computing," the commentary, full-text translation is as follows:

Cloud computing, to put it simply, allows file and application management over the Internet without the need to host and store or process the host hardware locally.

A series of improvements have been made to data storage, security, and delivery, and individuals and businesses can now remotely store data through third-party devices. Because these data and software are not physically stored, they are just as floating in the cloud.

Changes in the past decade from PC software can also see traces of cloud computing. Ten years ago, consumers were paying attention to the device's processing power and random access memory (RAM) as well as the hard disk capacity when they chose to buy a computer. This is because consumers have to operate through the device itself to do the calculation. Any software the consumer desires must be installed on the computer and accessed through the computer's central processing unit (CPU) and operating system. Therefore, the available RAM size will determine the program speed, while the total hard disk memory also determines the number of programs the user can.

Nowadays, no matter large enterprises or small and medium-sized enterprises or even individuals, they no longer need to think too much about buying hardware. In many cases, there is no hardware decision.

Bessemer Venture Partners, a long-term life-long venture capital firm, has summed up the ten rules of cloud computing, and once the thorny issues that plagued software vendors and users no longer exist. Software providers can now circumvent these challenges and simply get every business and individual access to all data and applications.

Cloud computing is partly due to the growth of Internet users. In 1999, about 50 million broadband users worldwide; and by 2012, it may reach 2 billion. As the number of users accelerates, the amount of time spent on free time increases and consumers start to access the Internet at an alarming level. Since then, Google came into being, has become an Internet giant today, for the millions, even billions of Internet users to provide trillion search services. Many of the innovations people have seen so far are a direct result of Google's response to the rapid growth of the Internet, and many are related to cloud computing. Other consumer-related online businesses follow. Amazon, for example, has become very adept at managing its data centers and infrastructures and began offering Amazon Web Services to third-party developers.

The same cloud construction shift is happening now in enterprise software.

Technology companies have captured this trend and started building specialized services specifically for businesses. As a result, organizations no longer need to spend large sums of money hiring IT consultants or staff to make comprehensive decisions for their hardware or software product group. On the contrary, companies can have many choices. You can take advantage of "public clouds," or create your own "private cloud." Public clouds like Dropbox, Box and Citrix ShareFile have been used by many businesses; private clouds have advantages in terms of security and management.

An added benefit is that businesses can store data through third-party datacenters run by data experts so that businesses can scale as they need to, when purchasing compute and storage.

As large enterprises continue to adopt various forms of cloud computing, enterprises will have to make key decisions about security, storage, software virtualization, proprietary information and data. It is estimated that in the future, people will see more changes in the existing ecosystem and the collapse of key enterprises such as HP and IBM.

Impact of cloud computing on venture capital.

Accessibility, availability and popularity of cloud computing have created a mature industry shift for disruptive technology innovators. The media continues to render the role of cloud computing in today's enterprise software where venture capital capitalizes on opportunities and flows into cloud computing startups. Venture capital institutions in the investment phase need to continue to pay attention to the success and growth potential of the industry to determine which companies can bring huge returns for investors. But what is certain is that cloud computing is still emerging and has the potential to outperform all other industries.

The author of the article Mandi Woodruff (Mandi Woodruff), Department of the United States well-known financial website Business Insider personal finance column editor, has worked in Yahoo Finance, Daily Finance, The Wall Street Journal and many other well-known media published works.