Your life in the cloud

Almost ten years ago, before I joined InfoWorld, I got the “digital home” bug. Networked PCs, DVRs, MP3s, VoIP phones, x10 sensors, wireless gear … it was all going to converge and stitch itself together into something really, really big. Ordinary people were going to use digital technology throughout the home to take control of their lives in a new way.

I’m still waiting. That’s why I was delighted to accept an invitation to see HP’s model SmartHome in Cupertino last Thursday. Led by my able tour guides, I drooled over all the HDTVs, wireless gear, digital picture frames, gorgeous touch interfaces, and … a media server rack?? That’s when it finally hit me: Nobody outside of a few hundred enthusiasts will ever set up anything anywhere near this complex in their home. This stuff is gonna move to the cloud.

[ See Paul Venezia’s review of Cisco’s Unified Computing System, a highly expandable blade server that is almost purpose-built for cloud service providers. ]

My revelation, if you can call it that, came courtesy of a visit to Cisco I had made the day before. Cisco, if you haven’t heard, is betting big on video conferencing and collaboration. It appears to be betting even bigger on cloud computing for both enterprises and consumers.

As you may have heard, Cisco recently told analysts it intends to become the leading IT company overall. That grand ambition — along with Cisco’s introduction of its Unified Computing System blade server — no doubt played a role in the recent rift between Cisco and HP. At the same time, Cisco is partnering with carriers to deliver cloud computing capabilities. One step away from traditional partners, another toward the guys who maintain the pipes. Sounds like a very, very big bet on the cloud.

I have little doubt that, over time, companies will draw more and more on cloud services for server infrastructure, dev platforms, and browser-based applications. But it hadn’t occurred to me that, in the home, cloud penetration could be even more profound. Already, when you use Comcast On Demand you’re operating a playback application remotely. When you think about it, does locally storing and maintaining anything digital make sense for the average consumer? Personal photos, home videos, music, scanned documents, all of it could be managed a whole lot easier in the cloud by your average consumer, given a fat enough pipe.

Of course, whatever the bandwidth, latency is a matter of physics and never goes away as a problem, which is why I can imagine a day when ISPs will provide their customers with WAN appliances along with local networking gear to minimize latency’s effects. You might also be provided with a local backup system — not for home network backup, but to guard against the possibility of data loss in the cloud. After all, as we record more and more of our lives in digital form, the risks of data loss become enterprise-class.

Like many of you, I can’t help but squirm at the idea of ceding so much to a service provider. I’m an old-fashioned guy who builds computers and maintains the home network. But I have a strong sense that the road to the digital home for the great mass of consumers runs straight through the cloud.

This article, “Your life in the cloud,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Eric Knorr’s Modernizing IT blog and follow the latest developments on cloud computing at InfoWorld.com.