
Quote: Originally Posted by
xarden
I would maybe consider a private, isolated cloud.
Isolated being the key word.
The idea of bringing the past into the future with dumb terminals is
fundamentally a good and potentially beneficial idea, but as many have already said before and will say in the future -
We don't like it because we don't trust it.
Part of that mistrust is the obfuscated nature of the explanations about how cloud computing will actually be
implemented that leaves us leery of it.
Without hard facts about how this is exactly going to work, we are left with more questions than answers and our imagination tends to fuel our fears in the absence of facts that could potentially mollify our fears and encourage us to embrace, rather than reject, the idea of cloud computing.
Another large part is
resistance to change.
We are used to the way things work now. For many varying reasons, we simply don't want it to change. For home use, I know I wouldn't want my 'cloud' to be anything other than 'personal and isolated'.
But with the ever increasing redefining of the word 'privacy' coupled with the usage of online stores, storage, apps, accounts, mobile devices etc, we are essentially being groomed for a cloud based lifestyle already.
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And I don't think that VMWare CEO is talking complete rubbish. Just look at the exponential improvements and proliferation of Virtual usage now. Given enough time time and refinements, I think his vision is entirely plausible.
Focusing on
current hardware and
current software is not the best way to look at this. Thinking forward and how it potentially could be implemented, it starts to make sense.
Using a corporate environment for example, if you could replace each typical workstation that consists of a complete PC and OS and the costs involved and replace that entire workstation with much cheaper, yet limited hardware functionality that connects to a 'dedicated machine' and a lower licensing cost per station, then it starts to look not only pretty attractive, but more importantly, feasible.
A complete PC with an OS isn't going away any time soon, but there will inevitably be markets for this guys sort of vision.