What Is Microsoft's Cloud

[setotitan]

So I saw MS' new commercial where the couple is stuck at the airport and they decide to "go to the cloud". If you watch the video it shows them open up what looks like Remote Desktop to their home PC. They then proceed to watch a movie, and laugh and laugh... Anyone who's ever used Remote Desktop know's it doesn't look exactly like the desktop at home, and if you've ever tried to stream a movie you get about 1 frame per second. God forbid you try to copy a file! Point being obviously the connection speed for Remote Desktop isn't that fast. However in the commercial it looks like it's a mirror image of their actual desktop able to stream video in real time. Now this is quite amazing! I wanted to see how it was done so I cruised on over to the site to check it out. However the site is a dazzling labyrinth of videos and animation, I can't seem to locate what program I need to use or what application I need to run to duplicate the results of the commercial. I was hoping someone could have a look or explain to me what's going on as Google has provided no answers.

 

[DaveHCYJ]

"The cloud" is just a new term for "the internet". I have no idea where it came from, probably some high level manager somewhere that doesn't know anything about computers and got used to seeing the internet drawn on diagrams as a cloud just decided to start calling it that and it stuck.

Its one of the recent buzz words. When people talk about using the cloud or cloud computing or cloud storage really what they mean is just storing/computer stuff on the internet or in some remote data center. The basic idea is that if you store all your stuff "in the cloud" (ie on the internet) you can get to it from anywhere and don't have to worry about maintaining your own servers or having your own servers crap out on you.

Its becoming pretty popular amoung buisnesses right now to outsource all their server needs to companies like MS. Its cheaper to just pay some other company to host some computers in their datacenter for you than it is to maintain your own servers and IT people.

I didn't watch the video, but it could be the people had movies stored in something like skydrive which is one of MS's online storage things.

So in summary cloud=internet and its nothing new technology wise, the only new thing is that its becoming more popular to outsource server/storage needs.

 

[benbaked]

I think the term "cloud" first originated in the 90s, I recall a computer networking teacher I had in 97 who referred to the internet as that. Probably like you said, because the image representing the Internet in Novell diagrams was a picture of a cloud.

 

[madhatter256]

What they talk about in the commercial is like a VPN.

Ultimately, in the future computers at homes will be nothing but network nodes and all of your data will be stored and secured at another location. Broadband technology will get to the point where you can 'stream' movies and games from the central server (cloud) to the node.

 

[joedymueller]

And of course have your fridge open a cold one and have it ready for you when you get home.

 

[DreamerBrian]

'Cloud' computing also means a centralization of networking services. 'Google Docs' brings the 'cloud' to your fingertips in that all of the services in a business are ran locally on your machine instead of on a server throughout your network. This obviously decreases latency and increases user efficiency.

Brian

 

[setotitan]

Thanks for all the replies, the information was quite helpful. However what I was really after, I guess I should have renamed the thread differently, is how to duplicate the results. What software or app or whatever do I need to get that mirror image of my desktop able to stream live video wherever I'm at? I don't know if the technology just isn't out. Perhaps they used clever editing and were not streaming media from their desktop. Maybe they just show a shot of their home desktop, but the media is streamed from a Sky Drive (MS' version of DropBox) I'm not sure. It just looked really amazing as a I use Remote Desktop quite often, and I'd love to be able to improve performance.

For those of you who haven't seen the commercial click the word "watch" in my original post.

 

[DreamerBrian]

Try Google Docs.

 

[DaveHCYJ]

It just looked really amazing as a I use Remote Desktop quite often, and I'd love to be able to improve performance.

SP1 for Server 2008 R2 and Win7 has a pretty sweet RDP improvement called RemoteFx which does wonders for the performance of full screen video. I don't have the link on hand, but I found it by googling -- there was a presentation at a recent nVidia conference where they demoed it. Unfortunately the software and hardware requirements are pretty steep, but it is a sign of things to come for RDP.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Ultimately, in the future computers at homes will be nothing but network nodes and all of your data will be stored and secured at another location.

That would be a failure! (remember NCs during circa 2001?)

 

[habbajabba]

A cloud is just an excuse to get people to pay so their data is stored on somebody else's server. As well it can facilitate applications that run from the web and accessed from anywhere. If I ever needed that ability I'd be sure to simply run my own server, preferably. If you have an extremely fast connection and the hardware to run it, you can make your own. Remember, the 'cloud' is only as good as your connection.
Software is available to emulate a 'cloud' and I believe it's linux based. Not sure as I glanced over it off freshmeat or sf recently.

 

[DreamerBrian]

This.

 

[setotitan]

This.

I know what cloud computing is, but from the commercial I'm referencing it doesn't look like cloud computing to me. And I do search before I post. It's infinitely faster for me to look on Google for an answer than it is to post a question here and check back every hour for a response. I only post questions when I'm truly stumped. Hence why my post count is so low but I've been a OC member for years. However while I don't appreciate your smart *** response, I am quite impressed with the link, very clever.

 

[Avro]

if you watch the commercial he is copying the video to his laptop before playing and then the commercial wipes to him watching. who knows how long it took to download that file...

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Corrected thread title - this isn't 4chan, digg, or reddit... Let's avoid doing the acronym thing in thread titles. (wtf, etc)

 

[DreamerBrian]

I know what cloud computing is, but from the commercial I'm referencing it doesn't look like cloud computing to me. And I do search before I post. It's infinitely faster for me to look on Google for an answer than it is to post a question here and check back every hour for a response. I only post questions when I'm truly stumped. Hence why my post count is so low but I've been a OC member for years. However while I don't appreciate your smart *** response, I am quite impressed with the link, very clever.

Sorry that my response didn't help. I didn't mean any disrespect! It's just very rare that I am able to use the lmgtfy website .

Kisses,
Brian

 

[hokiealumnus]

Sorry that my response didn't help. I didn't mean any disrespect! It's just very rare that I am able to use the lmgtfy website .

Kisses,
Brian

I don't care how rare it is that you can use the lmgtfy website. It's unhelpful and insulting. The vast majority of the members of this forum know how to use Google for heaven's sake. If you value your ability to post here, have a little respect and do not post lmgtfy links any more.

-hokie

 

[insanemonkey]

I too am confused about what they mean by the cloud. I understand what is normally meant by "the cloud".

I watched a commercial that had a lady editing a photo of her family on the cloud. How does the cloud have anything to do with editing a photo? Are we supposed to upload every image that we want to edit to a server, then edit it and finally download it. That seems a lot slower then just doing it locally. Plus with ISPs capping traffic, things are going to go bad really quick when we are sending everything to a remote site.

Home computers are fast enough to do just about anything that people want them to do. The average user has no need for the cloud. The only benefit is you can access it from anywhere.

 

[deadlysyn]

I'm no expert on this Cloud thing that MS seems to be pushing, but from the sounds of this thread, the things being mentioned could be done just as easily using a tool like LogMeIn or an ftp server. Am I mistaken or just completely missing the point?

 

[DreamerBrian]

I don't care how rare it is that you can use the lmgtfy website. It's unhelpful and insulting. The vast majority of the members of this forum know how to use Google for heaven's sake. If you value your ability to post here, have a little respect and do not post lmgtfy links any more.

-hokie

Got it! Sorry.

Home computers are fast enough to do just about anything that people want them to do. The average user has no need for the cloud. The only benefit is you can access it from anywhere.

I agree! The average user doesn't have as much use for cloud computing as businesses do. I personally think it's just a marketing scheme to push business-level technology to the common end-user under the ideology of "businesses use it so it must be even more awesome for me".