The word cloud has been thrown around for years to describe the internet, but there's a growing trend at the moment to launch services that seem to embody actual "cloud / grid computing".  This movement to some extent is just the logical extension of the rich web applications that have gained popularity as part of the "web 2.0" epidemic of increasing bandwidth and remote server horsepower.

The two obviously notable solutions in this area are Microsoft's Live Mesh, which was announced and put into a public beta / technical preview a few months ago (Ray Ozzie's second attempt to solve the problem of distributed device synchronisation after the canned ".NET My Services") and Apples Mobile Me.  I'm normally a somewhat critical Microsoft supporter (not an apologist), I'll put that on the table now, however I suspect that Apples service is likely to get more traction due to iPhone 2.0 support and it's forthcoming lower price point (at the very least in the UK, possibly elsewhere).

Both of these services effectively offer the same thing, centralised data storage and device synchronisation, Apple offer what they call the "me.com suite of web applications" and Microsoft offer the "Live Desktop" as the online interface to this storage pool, both offer mobile clients, both offer desktop clients for both computing platforms.  They're effectively the same service, it's Exchange Home Edition with Outlook Web Access enabled, for want of a better example.  It's Microsoft and Apple desperately trying to get between the desktop and Google Apps.

But that's really what I have a problem with.  The great benefit of grid computing is the utilisation of large amounts of CPU resource to accomplish large tasks very quickly, not data warehousing your users personal data.  It's seemingly something that both of these "cloud computing" solutions have entirely missed and in reality, they've supplied Active Sync and Exchange for the home user combined with the three million iDrive, YourDrive, MyDrive, HisDrive services that became popular before the Web 2.0 bubble in about 2001-2002 and effectively managed to shut themselves down after being used solely for piracy.

I don't actually believe that the world internet infrastructure is ready for these types of services yet because of the data ownership implications and I feel that these services have been designed almost inside out in nature.  Data synchronisation is nice, I'm sure everyone would agree with that, but by forcing these solutions to market before we're in an ecosystem where users can host their own file-identity-synchronisation services out of the home in a process as simple as signing up to something like Mobile Me or Live Mesh, we're setting a precedent.  That precedent says that it's ok to surrender your personal data to a giant third party data store in the sky, and honestly this is not ok. 

This is a choice the vendors are making, and in my single honest opinion, an exceptionally bad one.  Apple could just as easy focus their energy into making a Mac Mini derived small home device that provides the same functionality as Mobile Me, that plugs in to a home router.  I don't mind them offering a Mobile Me like service for people that don't want to be responsible for the keys to their home, but I sure as hell have a problem with both them and Microsoft forcing people to give up their homes in the name of data synchronisation.

This is another case of a good idea that people will enjoy, poorly implemented and pushed out to market, when the effort should be in enabling a permanently connected high speed internet for the masses, and the engineering of devices that allow the user to control their own resources.  I know I sure as hell don't want to loose all of my data because of some sloppy code and an exploit or two.  I'm sure companies of the size of the big players in this market can secure data, but walking around with a target on your back is never a good idea.  Cloud computing should be about applications and not data, do not be told otherwise.  They bring the technology and knowledge and you bring your data to that party, not the other way around.

As a footnote, I think both implementations look pretty slick and offer good functionality, albeit nothing above and beyond synchronising to a mobile device with a HDSD card in it (my current solution involves a large memory card, a HTC Touch and ActiveSync to effectively reproduce this functionality).  Online identity, sharing and data stores are the future, lets just not let people lock us in to a poor aggressive implementation.  Vote with your wallet people.

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