Microsoft Unveils Office 365 Cloud Computing

Microsoft in an attempt to compete with Google Apps, is ready with Office 365. Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription service and will feature cloud computing. An analyst Jeffry Mann at Gartner Inc. said, Google Apps "was really the primary competitive target for this."

The Office 365 is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Google and the likes in the field of web-based e-mail services. The new Office 365 will compete with the Google Apps, a web version of word processing and spreadsheets.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the delivery of information technology services over the internet at a dramatically lower cost and with dynamic scalability. The cloud concept incorporates software as a service (SaaS) as well as other recent technology trends satisfying the computing needs of users via the internet.

Cloud's Overview

Comparisons

Cloud computing derives characteristics from, but should not be confused with:

1. Autonomic computing — "computer systems capable of self-management"^[14]
2. Client–server model – client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requesters (clients)^[15]
3. Grid computing — "a form of distributed computing and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks"

Cloud History

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to 1960s, when John McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility". Almost all the modern day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision, provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the electricity industry and the use of public, private, government and community forms was thoroughly explored in Douglas Parkhill's, 1966 book, "The Challenge of the Computer Utility".
The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications companies, who until the 1990s primarily offered dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost.

Cloud Features

• Agility improves with users' ability to rapidly and inexpensively re-provision technological infrastructure resources.^[34]
• Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure.^[35] This ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house).^[36]

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.
Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client–server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.^[1] Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.^[2][3] It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet.^[4]

Cloud computing

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MOE takes big leap to Google platform

IN a landmark move and nod to the rise of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will be adopting a suite of Web-based software from US search giant Google.

By year-end, over 30,000 teachers and staff in over 350 schools will get the software, called Google Apps. It includes popular electronic messaging application Gmail, as well as office applications like word processor and spreadsheet.

The tender is worth about $650,000 per year, for two years, MOE said yesterday.

MOE Adopts Open Standard Internet Email and Collaboration Services for Over 30,000 Teachers

1The Ministry of Education (MOE), together with NCS Pte Ltd and Google, officially announced today that they are working together to make available the Google Apps (Education version) suite of online communications and collaboration tools to more than 30,000 teachers and staff in over 350 schools in Singapore by end 2009. This will make MOE the first Ministry in Singapore to adopt an open standard cloud computing platform and the first in Asia to provide Web 2.0 communication and collaboration tools to all teachers in the public school system.

S'pore stays hot for Google offerings

Date : 21 September 2009
Publication : The Business Times
Page / Section : 26 / BizIT