Apple iCloud – Cloud Computing for your Grandparents

The announcement this week of Apple’s “iCloud” service is an enormous step forward for cloud computing. To date “cloud” has been a marketing buzzword, a hassle for IT departments, a concern for legal departments and a major focus for investors. However, for the general public the topic has been of little interest and the majority of computer users have continued to use much the same technology as 5 years ago. With the news that Apple is rolling out an integrated suite of cloud services for iPhone and iPad users this situation has changed, with cloud computing entering the mainstream virtually overnight courtesy of a Steve Jobs’ keynote.

Apple’s iCloud announcement came in the same week as a Forrester research report looking at the market for personal cloud services. Forrester’s research focussed on the type of service which we have referred to as online productivity services: tools for creating and sharing documents; data backup services; task and project management tools etc. Forrester estimate that the worldwide personal cloud market will be worth $12 billion by 2016, while in a blog post they go on to say:

The personal computing experience has become a major pain in the neck, as people add smartphones and tablets to the growing number of PCs they use at work and at home – more than half the US online population, about 135 million people, have the challenge of managing their content across multiple PCs and smartphones.

Forrester believes that a new computing experience is emerging, based on the personal cloud concept, that will redefine the computing experience around a user’s personal and work information, so that it’s seamlessly accessible across all of an individual’s devices.

Although Apple were arguably falling behind Google and even Microsoft due to their lack of cloud services the introduction of iCloud has immediately changed the market. Frank Gillett of Forrester even suggests that Apple now lead Google on personal cloud services (prior to a single customer going live on iCloud!) and estimates that Apple’s innovation around cloud services is “on par with the most notable startups in the personal cloud space, such as Dropbox, Box.net, and Evernote”. Read more