by Arra Derderian
15. June 2011 19:42
So Apple launched their iCloud platform recently and I have been kind of soaking it all in before I wrote a post on it. I also got a little shove from Lauren Carlson. I read her article entitled Can the Apple iCloud Make it Rain in the Enterprise? I thought it was a great read and expressed some similar thoughts I had on the whole iCloud platform.
When I see Apple products come out I get excited because I own an iPhone and a Macbook. I buy my music through iTunes and use my iPhone for my calendar, photos, and music playing. But as a developer it doesn't mean much to me. I feel like unless your building iPhone apps then I am really unsure of what your building on the Apple platform. Maybe it is because I am so immersed in the Microsoft world I don't know of anything outside of it, but I really can't think of any other development being done in that space. Apple's iCloud is targeted towards the everyday consumer but does nothing for me as a developer. It just allows app developers to utilize the online storage and syncing capabilities.
Apple will win the consumer facing cloud battle because so many people use their products. As Lauren Carlson pointed out in her blog, most people who own one Apple product own multiple Apple products. So to them the iCloud is a logical infrastructure for them. Although I thought this already existed with MobileMe anyways right?? But what about building cloud scalable applications and utilizing the cloud platform as a new tool to build enterprise ready applications? Apple is not up to par with Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform or Google's platform. Apple is offering a solution for Apple consumers to sync their information across multiple devices and 5GB of free storage. This is something that has been in existence in Google's solution and Microsoft's for some time now. Microsoft has had SkyDrive which syncs all of your documents, contacts, photos, and videos. And they give you 25GB free!
I think the iCloud is exciting news for consumers who utilize Apple products but doesn't mean much as far as advancing the cloud computing space. In fact there are rumors that Apple is utilizing Microsoft's solution for some of the logic and infrastructure of their new iCloud. I find this very interesting and perhaps it means Apple really doesn't care about the enterprise/developer route. They seem to be crushing it in the consumer space anyways. Even last week my dad bought an iPod.
Subscribe