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In the cloud, on the road to unified functional interfaces

Okay, I give up, the cloud wins.

After years of first resisting and then grudgingly accepting it, I am in the cloud up to my neck, and I have to say I am excited about path it has put me on.

Sure, I still have all the concerns I always have had about security, privacy, governance, and the ramifications of putting so many of my eggs in somebody else’s basket. But what tipped the scales was my investigation of Google Chrome, which I decided to try after noticing how large a majority of the visitors to the Holly Group website is using it. It was then that I realized I could finally unify my access to my contacts, calendar, and Internet telephone, and it was not long thereafter that I capitulated.

What’s happened is that the functions available through the cloud have become easier to get to even as they have become more sophisticated. The latest generation of web browsers was designed with connecting to these functions in mind, so in my context, Chrome is faster and more accommodating of cloud-facing extensions than Firefox currently is – and since I originally switch to Firefox because it was better in these regards than Internet Explorer was, it would appear that nature is running its course.

The bottom line is that it is now possible to do more work than ever without leaving the comfort of your browser – a statement takes me back to 1997, when I first researched a new type of computer desktop that combines the concepts of the browser and the portal to create a unified gateway to all kinds of information and applications.

My suspicion is that it won’t be long before this becomes a practical reality and that the currently-clunky attempts by Microsoft and Apple to provide the same user experience on their desktops, laptops, and smart devices begin to bear fruit. And now that I have finally succumbed to the cloud and its wiles, I am glad to know that I will be there when that fruit is ready to harvest.

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