Over the weekend it struck me how different (i.e. frictionless & efficient) my information work-flow has become because of all the Google services I use. It’s part of my “cloud-first” mindset when thinking about creating and sharing content. And I use the term “content” in the broadest meaning; email is content, a document is content, this blog post is content, even a “tweet” I consider content.

Here is how I got started with “cloud-first” thinking:

1. Gmail

April Fools Day 2004, almost nine years ago, I made a dramatic email paradigm shift. I left Outlook and jumped whole heart into Gmail. With Outlook I obsessively organized incoming email into byzantine folder structures. Projects, customers, personal, business. For some reason whiling away the hours organizing my email made me feel good, but that was in reality a ”false high.” And to top it off a wasted effort; the folder structure became stale over time.

Gmail, with it’s folder-free, conversation-centric, fast search approach to email management was the complete opposite user experience and it just “clicked” for me.

“How could I have not seen this before?” It took thinking outside the (in)box to transform email. No more dragging to folders. Simple tagging works better. Conversations threaded automatically. Woot!

2. Google Apps

In 2007 I started using Google Apps for content creation. A similar eureka moment occurred. Just like moving from Outlook to Gmail, moving from Word + Excel to GApps Docs + Spreadsheets was a fresh, modern approach to collaborative content creation. There was so much friction in the old world. Working on a shared document required emailing the file around or keeping track of versions on a file share. With GDocs the editing was in place, versions maintained, and collaboration speed increased. Now I get hives when someone sends me a Word file looking for comments and edits.

We’re fast approaching the era where the “file,” residing on a file system, will not be the default work product unit. It will be a shared document in a collaboration space designed for multi-user editing.

It took some patience with Google as they incrementally improved Gapps. But today it’s pretty good and getting better faster.

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A few publications asked for “2013 Cloud Computing Predictions.” Sonian has been at the center of “cloud” since 2007, so I have a unique perspective to share. So despite the obvious prediction… (there will be ”clouds” in 2013) below are eight realistic expectations for the state of cloud computing throughout the year 2013.

1. The definition of “Cloud” will become clear
The years 2008 through 2012 started the “cloud computing” conversation, but there is quite a bit of “cloudiness – pun intended” about what the term cloud really means. Commodity-priced public clouds like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace compete for mindshare with hybrid and private cloud wares from Citrix, VMWare and others. Each camp uses the same terms interchangeably, which confuses the IT decision maker. The truth is, most businesses will use a combination of public and private cloud services. This is because there are some use-cases where the public cloud is simply the best value per IT budget dollar. And there are other examples where a unique requirement calls for a private cloud solution.

Throughout 2013 the public cloud providers will do a better job to differentiate their offerings from private cloud vendors. Public cloud vendors will showcase economics and security postures that will be very appealing to mid-size businesses. As more medium-sized organizations find cloud success, even enterprises will start to investigate their cloud options.

2. Enterprise IT will embrace cloud computing with at least  three production or research and development projects using a public cloud
The past five years of physical server migration to server room virtualization pave the way for the next big wave, which is to use “cloud” for some IT workloads. Many businesses have identified a few projects where testing public cloud is budgeted and planned for 2013. Applications that consume large quantities of storage or have dynamic (elastic) compute needs are the first ideal candidates.

However, many IT decision makers do understand we are at the beginning of a decade long migration, and there will be a lot of experimentation before massive wholesale cloud adoption is mainstream in the Global 2000.

3. The “Virtuous Cycle of Cloud Computing” will become obvious
Cloud computing represents new thinking on the “economies of scale” factoring into very large infrastructure purchasing dynamics. For example, as more customers use cloud compute and storage, the cloud vendors in essence, make larger purchases. Buying more lowers their costs, which in turn, allows the cloud vendors to drop prices. Lower prices encourages more customers to buy into the cloud, and the cycle repeats itself.

The IT industry has never before witnessed the positive effect of large bulk purchases, shared across hundreds of thousands of IT consumers. This will commoditize services for a very large buying audience. The closest allegory might be when government sponsors research (examples: the Internet, NASA) and then the private sector continues the innovation after the research phase.

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I have been using Chrome’s new “Open Tab on Remote Device” capability ever since it was first introduced months ago. It’s a great productivity compliment to “pinning a tab.” From any device I use on a regular basis (Macbook Air, Mac Mini, iPad or Android) my open Chrome tabs are synchronized and available. This is different from synchronized bookmarks. This provides a whole new level of fluidity between the devices where I access the Internet. And pretty much all my information processing and content creation is via a web browser.

For example, if I leave a web site/app open on the shared Mac Mini in the kitchen I can continue to access the same site on my personal Macbook Air, or any other device that supports the Chrome browser. (Today that now includes all iOS devices.) This functionality is not some third-party add-in, but rather a fully supported built-in feature.

Here is what the UI experience looks like from my Macbook Air:

This is the “Open a new tab” screen showing my frequent sites. Notice the “Other Devices” at the bottom?

Here is the Chrome settings screen:

Tick the “Open Tabs” option to enable this great new feature.

This post is inspired by a recent conversation with a fellow cloud computing enthusiast from the West coast.

We were engaged in a spirited discussion comparing IT trends pre and post cloud adoption. My friend jogged a memory about “naming servers.” Strangely I remembered most of the names for the “important” servers in my life. Every company I was involved with had a server naming scheme. Planets, cartoon characters, cities, sometimes funny names and sometimes purely functional.

Before the cloud we treated servers like pets. In the cloud we treat servers like cattle.

Before “the cloud” we treated our servers like pets. We named them, cared for them, upgraded them with kit gloves, and “fixed” them when they broke. We projected personalities onto the machines that served files, email, firewall and other crucial enterprise IT services.  Some servers always seemed to be troublesome, and others problem-free. An impromptu midnight scramble coaxing a failed email server back to life was always drama filled. Would the server past POST? Would the SCSI RAID subsystem mount? Fingers-crossed and sighs of relief  when clients could finally log back in.

In “the cloud” we treat our servers like cattle.  Numbers instead of names. When cloud servers get sick, we “kill them” (no offense to PETA). We don’t fix or upgrade. We bootstrap new and replace. There is no sentimental bond between us humans and our inanimate cloud servers. Instead we experience transference  by naming and projecting personalities onto our software components and the clusters of cloud servers that run the software. Indeed our software contains developer DNA, so why shouldn’t a server cluster exude the personalities of the principle contributors? Or morph into something totally unexpected because our genes intermingle with cloud DNA.

What were some of your favorite server names?

GDrive is coming… GDrive is coming… GDrive is coming!

Wait… wait… wait… we’ve heard this before, right? GDrive is eminent because tantalizing mysterious screen shots and hints of the phantom service observed in source code & robots.txt files tell us so. But when GDrive does finally arrive (no one doubts it will eventually) will it be a yawn or a yelp of applause?

I love Google Docs, so anything Google does to blur the lines between GDoc content and file-system data will be appreciated. I already have a workflow that would make any Rube Goldberg fan beam with pride. My little Frankenstein is a combination of Dropbox, Cyberduck/Amazon S3, Arc 2, all syncing cloud, Macbook and iPad. GDrive will surely create more options.

When GDrive launches, the “cloud storage” landscape will look roughly like this (pardon me for missing a vendor in my quick search):

Primarily Consumer & SMB Focused

• Dropbox
• Microsoft Skydrive
• LogMeIn Cubby
• SugarSync
• Sharefile
• OxygenCloud
• Pogo Plug
• iCloud
• MokaFive

Primarily Enterprise Focused

• Egnyte
• Nasuni
• TwinStrata
• Accellion
• SpiderOak
• VMware Octopus
• AWS Storage Gateway

Serves both Consumer and Enterprise with dedicated focus

• GDrive (If Google Apps integration is available)
• Box.com
• JungleDisk

Wow… this space is getting more crowded every Techcrunch news cycle. There are plenty of folks pontificating who ultimately “wins” this war. My guess: There will be less than a handful of major providers and less than a dozen minor players.

[Aside: Being a minor (niche) player doesn’t have to be a negative. Many a successful startup serve niche audiences.]

The majors will be Microsoft, Google, Apple and two others. Maybe Amazon, but not sure if AWS is a “major” on it’s own or because it will be supporting all the minors behind the scenes. The majors may buy a startup like Box or Dropbox. Otherwise Box and Dropbox both become large minors, distinguishing themselves with super sweet user experiences. The majors all have big eco-system-platforms that feed customers to their cloud storage aspiration appetites.

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