Cloud Applications are like an iceberg. The ‘portion above
water’ is what most people have seen. What lies below is yet to come. The
obvious as well as hidden potential of cloud apps is driving its business value
upwards and costs of implementation downwards.
For the average Joe with a smart phone and a laptop to boot,
cloud is the buzzword. With the internet connectivity to mobile devices
touching a point of ascendance, the cloud becomes even more relevant. You can
place that average Joe anywhere on the consumer normal curve – be it the
innovator, early follower, early majority, late majority or the laggards – the
usage pattern and the value sought from the cloud application remains more or
less the same. The jury is out on whether one can actually classify the ‘cloud
app end-user’ based on the mentioned categories because of the sheer
proliferation of such cloud apps as Dropbox, Google Docs etc. which have made
adoption and use as easy as point/touch and click. But what is evident is the
propensity of people around the world, to using a cloud app for a purpose or
many purposes, as the case may be.
In my daily work and play motions, apps have become an
essential part of the way in which I function, interact, communicate or
consume. With Android becoming a green pasture for many a cloud app startup to
happily graze on my life couldn’t have been better. The following is an attempt
to share with you, the reader, three of my favorite things on the cloud.
Google Docs
A real godsend in terms of functionality, this cloud app is
one of the most essential tools in my ‘garage’ of an app collection. For people
like me who lead two lives, one inside the office and one outside of it and
both equally vibrant and demanding, Google docs becomes the easiest way to
create, share, edit and move on. The devil is not in the details in this case.
While MS Office clearly outshines Google docs, the attraction quotient for me
is its simplicity, its complicity to my existing documents and the fact that I
have so many friends with whom the docs can be shared for tweaking, editing or
creation. The fact that it’s free makes it simple, lucid and a win-win
proposition for consumers like me. With the arrival of Google Drive, the value
proposition just got the shot in the arm it needed.
Dropbox
The name says it all. One of my earliest brushes with cloud
apps was through Dropbox and it sure did impress me. Combining one of the most
basic functions that behoove a cloud with the basic need of storing files on
the go, Dropbox has come a long way since its inception. Originally an answer
to the conundrum of a lost USB drive, Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox did
something that now benefits close to 50 million users worldwide. One of them,
lucky me, finds the app the easiest to use when it comes to storing my photos,
documents or presentations, that I know would eat up space on my HDD. Even with
the Android Market awash with alternatives, my allegiance to Dropbox is
unwavering simply because it has improved rapidly over the years and maintained
its parity and differentiators vis-à-vis other players. The ‘Point-click and
store’ activity never had a more apt name.
Yuuguu
The name has an Indian touch to it. Anish Kapoor, one of
cofounders of this extremely useful desktop sharing and conferencing website,
admitted that the idea behind Yuuguu was borne out of the need to collaborate
and work inclusively. The idea caught on with Philip Hemsted and together,
Yuuguu was launched in 2007. The underlying idea of the app is a multiprotocol
messaging program that supports the biggest IM services--Yahoo, MSN, Google,
AIM, ICQ, and more recently Skype. And it sure does deliver in terms of quality
of sharing, IM messaging speed and usage simplicity. What is the killer-blow in
this case is its ability to allocate to every conversation a private global
conference bridge which therefore ensures smooth data flow and collaboration.
In my book and considering the work that I do, Yuuguu is the best ‘Web 2.0
certified’ (if there is such a thing) desktop sharing and web-conferencing tool
out there!
[Written for Recruiterbox, 2012]
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