Dear Commons Community,

I have made several posts on this blog regarding cloud computing.  Companies such as Google and IBM are investing significant resources on the concept that more and more of the application software that currently resides on our personal desktop and laptop computers will be replaced by software that resides on large, high-end computers networked for all the world (in the clouds) to use.  Applications such as Google Apps is an example of how cloud computing is beginning to move in the mainstream.  Microsoft yesterday announced that it would be offering a free, web-based version of Office (Ms-Word, Excel, Powerpoint) to users as well as provide storage capabilities.  Users of this new version of Office will be able to share and work on the same documents and presentations over the Internet rather than e-mailing files back and forth to each other. Microsoft will also create a way for people to flip from the PC to online versions of Office to give users the best of both worlds.   I see this as a major step forward for cloud computing.

Tony

A NY Times article on the above is available at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/technology/12soft.html?th&emc=th