Personal Clouds

Are PC's now passe?

By Yardi Blog Staff on Mar 30, 2012 in Technology

Personal clouds seem to be on everybody’s lips these days. Frequently referred to as the new era of personal computing, the clouds are indeed revolutionary, but what exactly are they and what can they do for us? Essentially, personal clouds are online services that allow consumers to store, share, synch, protect and stream data using multiple connected devices such as smartphones, media tablets and PCs over the internet.

Gartner, Inc, a technology research and advisory firm known for delivering specialized insight on various IT areas, acknowledges the huge impact of personal clouds on individual users and expects it to replace the personal computer at the center of our digital lives by 2014.

“Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices,” Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. “Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”

As a result, the future looks even brighter for technology developers. According to Gartner, consumers will spend approximately $2.2 trillion on digital technology products and services in 2012, or about 10 percent of the average disposable household income. By 2015, consumers are expected to spend around $2.8 trillion worldwide on connected devices, affiliate services and transferred contents.

Regarded as a real breakthrough in the field of information technology, personal clouds promise to deliver smart solutions to experimented digital users. While consumer needs are extremely varied and expectations differ greatly, the general requirements involve availability, security and access to personal contents without complications or restrictions. This is exactly what personal clouds aim to be, a reflection of consumer needs.

From a consumer perspective, one of the most innovative features introduced by cloud computing is that it allows a wide array of devices to be concurrently connected and active, thus providing easy access to a nearly infinite amount of resources and endless opportunities to stay in touch with family, friends and co-workers.

Here are a few of the benefits of personal cloud computing:

• Users can easily store virtual workspace or a digital personality online
• Allows seamless access to personal content from any internet connected remote location; music, pictures, books and videos, contacts or work files available when and where you want
• Adds flexibility to the personal computing experience
• Simplifies file synchronizing and sharing
• Allows users to invite friends/co-workers to join, share, upload, and download files in their Personal Cloud
• Access files from smartphones, tablets and computers

Apple’s iCloud, for example, pulls its content from all of your devices, be they Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, right out of the box. It’s integrated into the software and constantly synchronized, a convenience that’s made more  complicated when your cloud is drawing its data from a variety of devices created by a variety of diverse makers.

With all these new technologies emerging, desktop personal computers begin to look more and more like a thing of the past. Are you using a personal cloud? How has it changed your technology habits?