Legal Research

Cloud Computing: Google?s Knowledge Sharing Solution

By Agnese Caruso

I recently attended the KMWorld web event “Developing a Knowledge Sharing Culture in the 21st Century.” The speaker, Ashley Gorringe from Google Enterprise, provided some insights into Google’s vision of cloud computing and how it can create a culture that allows all aspects of an organization to move insync. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

Characteristics of work tools that are designed for today’s knowledge worker:

• Utilize the power of networks. Must be social.
• Not tied to a desktop computer.
• Can access information and projects very quickly.
• Must work on mobile devices.
• Access information anytime and from anywhere.

Opportunities of cloud computing:

• Radically lowers the cost. Much cheaper than on-premise solutions.
• Much faster application development. Pace of innovation is much faster.
• Scales across businesses of all sizes. Larger organizations benefit because its cheaper than supporting a large IT group. Small to medium size businesses can leverage alot of technology for a similar price as a large business.
• Frees up an organization’s IT group’s time to work on more strategic projects.

What is cloud computing?

• Using a large scale service to hold an organization’s information.
• Accessing information anytime and from anywhere.
• Data and applications reside in the network.
• 1) Based on massive data centres that are very secure, 2) purpose built hardware, and 3) software platform of Internet scale

Google’s enterprise vision:

Google Cloud

a) Google apps (e.g., video, chat, docs, etc.)

b) Platform – The platform allows you to connect and build your own apps. Since many businesses have existing systems that will still need to be implemented, a range of APIs are developed that allow you to take the existing systems and connect them to the API platform.

c) Access – You can access information from different platforms (e.g., Chrome OS, mobile devices, etc.)

Objections/challenges to cloud computing:

• Security issues.
• IT group will want to protect their turf.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 04, 2010 (boomark / email).