Although I am somehow late giving my opinion on the subject, I think it is worth the try.

One of the areas cloud computing can be very useful and extremely capable is on the thin clients. Despite the fact that definition of a thin client nowadays is quite different than few years ago (take iPad and compare it to any of the “revolutionary” J2ME enabled devices) they are still far less capable than conventional computers, i.e. laptops and desktops.

iPad (as a good example and so far the best in the segment) is fairly powerful by itself and offers decent performance in doing resource-intensive tasks like 3D game rendering. But there are times that its processing power and storage capacity is not sufficient for certain tasks. You might say, well turn to a more powerful computer then. The price of such move could be sacrificing the super cool and useful features like ultra-portability and modern human user interface of the iPad.

Think of a university class in which all students bring along their iPads (or a similar tablet computer). Such device is more than enough for day to day tasks like note taking, voice recording, web surfing, and email. But when a resource-intensive task is needed, e.g accessing a huge archive of files and resources that needs a powerful processor for search and a big disk to store the data, the students can easily connect to the (private or public) cloud of the university and let the powerful servers do the job for them. The result is then transmitted back to the device without using extra battery or other resources. In the case of iPhone OS platform with SDK 4 it is even possible to do it in the background while doing other stuff.

You might ask how such an obvious case for the benefit of cloud computing is related to Flash on iPad?

Flash is a resource-hungry technology by nature and any device planning to support it, will sacrifice a considerable amount of battery life for the sake of more compatibility. And everybody knows how important batteries are for portable devices.

Noting that Flash-based applications do not necessarily have a better representation of data (being a front-end technology) and most of the features provided by Flash are easily doable with a mix of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, why employ a technology that will waste the precious battery life? A device like iPad is thin enough to rely on the cloud and stay cost-effective as well, while is powerful enough to perform the majority of daily tasks without external help.

Elasticity is essential for the cloud software, in which the software can use as much expensive resources as needed, for a limited period of time and then release them when the resource-hungry jobs are done. Why not keeping the less powerful devices as they are and instead putting the extra and occasional tasks on the datacenters shoulders?

Now in the middle of Apple-Adobe war, and apart from the usual corporate stuff, the question is that how this could affect cloud-based apps.

It is not hard to guess that there is no immediate and direct impact, but in longer run manufacturers will need to make more powerful and obviously more expensive devices to cope with technologies like Flash. This means less people and companies will afford to use such devices, which will eventually make an impact of the total number of thin cloud users.

Either Adobe will have to redesign its beloved platform, or it will have to be abandoned for a better technology. I believe Adobe can pull this off if it feels the pressure, because now it’s not just a small number of Mac users complaining about lousy Flash performance. We are talking about 10s of millions of mobile device users. Let alone the manufacturers.

On the other hand, we have to wait and see how well will Android do with its Flashy promises. If they could find a way to do it cheap, then Apple should think of a better solution than banning Flash.

Sometimes we become so obsessed and dependant to technologies like Flash that we can’t even imagine a world without them. It is true that it is a major part of the business model of a software giant, but so was the MS-DOS. Nobody believed back in 1995 that they could live without MS-DOS and now the younger generation doesn’t even know what it is.

After weeks of “research” I contacted Sauder School of Business and they just enlightened me with the information I already knew: “You are late for fall 2010 and you have to apply after September with all supporting documents including a GMAT score.

Well, I have got enough time to study Math again (tickles some old nightmares) but to get a better chance to be admitted and hopefully get an scholarship, I need to be really good at GMAT.

There are 12 books to start with, 3 official books and 8 from Manhattan. There are also classes to attend. I guess I’ll start with the books because I’m good at self-paced studying. After taking a sample test or two I can decide whether to go to a real class as well or not.

There are many (I mean it) resources to study for GMAT and these 3 websites are must-check:

• www.mba.com
• www.beatthegmat.com
• www.gmatclub.com

Companies like Manhattan offer online classes for the busy applicants, but you can still attend UBC classes to have better and real connection with your classmates (aka competitors).

Well, I’m still at the beginning and I can’t advise anybody about anything. This is briefly the data I collected so far and I’ll update the post if I find something worthy in the future.

So good luck if you are in the GMAT game too.

P.S. Obviously some of the information mentioned above applies to Canadians only. I am sure you can find plenty of resources online of and test center near you.

Security remains as one of the biggest challenges in adopting and spreading cloud computing. But there is an even bigger concern that could threaten the existence of clouds in a bigger picture.

Read the story to find out what this threat is and what could be done about it.

As you might know the Open Cloud Manifesto debuted on March 30st.

It outlines the pillars of Cloud Computing as well giving a brief on what the possible threats and weaknesses could challenge the early and future adopters.

The manifesto declares 4 major goals of an Open Cloud:

• Choice; to give total freedom to the cloud clients in choosing between different cloud providers with no barriers
• Flexibility; to maximize the interoperability between Clouds and organizations on different Clouds.
• Speed and Agility; to employ open interfaces to allow organizations to build solutions that easily and quickly integrate

Read the full story

One of the greatest aspects of Cloud Computing is SaaS (Software as a Service). With the current credit crunch creeping all over the world, this might be biggest chance for SaaS to take a big leap and make itself ahead of the game.

However is it like that everywhere? Or is it just in US and Canada?

The point is that Middle East market is so overwhelmed by Microsoft supplied software that there seem to be no room to breath for alternatives. Windows is a reigning champ on both client and server systems, Exchange is there with no competitor, and Office is a no-brainer choice. In higher market levels you see Oracle and SAP ruling.

You might say, duh, this is pretty much the case everywhere, the situation here is more intense. The local market is so addicted to such products that I think it will take another 2 to 3 years for it to wake and see the world is a better place with SaaS.

However there are some constraints too. In a perfect world, SaaS applications would work just fine replacing the sluggish, pricey, and hard to maintain  applications.

But here is the thing: What if we can’t rely on the local Internet connection? UAE (where I currently live) has the best Internet facilities and biggest user share in the region, but we experience total blackouts one or twice a year due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

Well, I don’t need to say that what will happen to my cloud-based business if my US-hosted SaaS application goes down for a day.

In the other hand, there a lot of political and economic tensions between this part of the world and the rest of it! The security risk does matter and if a Middle Eastern firm totally relies on an overseas SaaS platform, what could be the guarantee for this not be used as a potential pressure factor?

Perhaps local and private SaaS platforms could be the best solution, but Private Clouds have their own merits and demerits.

Whatever the ups and downs of moving to the Cloud could be, the companies in the region, especially government and enterprises should have a close look at what is currently happening up in the Cloud.

However creating such group although looking simple is a bit tricky.

Many users (including myself) reported that one they want to creat organization groups, it would give them a vague error message. This is because in creating the group you don’t specify a moderator!

I found this totally by accident (I’m not sure if this is included in the documentation) that every organization group needs a moderator along with the members to be specified.

Is that really true? We have 10+ laptops and workstations running Windows Vista Basic, Premium and Business and nobody is happy with the way Vista runs, not even after installing the gigantic SP1.

It is often said that Apple’s 37% growth sales in Macs is partly because of Vista’s failure in fulfilling customer’s expectations, not to mention the great power of Mac OS although having less than 10% of the market.

My point here is not comparing Windows and Mac OS that is discussed for thousands of times. The important matter here is that all PC manufacturers who proudly ship Vista in all new PCs and laptops are definitely aware of the flaws of the not-very-new OS. However they garnish their marketing campaigns with “recommendations” of Vista to the poor consumer.

It is getting political in here because it doesn’t make sense anymore that you allegedly advertise your product carrying an incapable but essential part, the operating system.

When I saw it today on the back cover of the Business Week that DELL “still” recommends Vista with their latest business laptop, I wondered and grumbled to my colleagues (while sarcastically showing them the advert) about the ridiculous ignorance of the public that just chews what vendors offer.

Everybody is surprised with the terrible performance of Vista in either home or office. I still can’t believe Microsoft could betray the Windows community that big and don’t even bother apologizing.

We spend at least 1 hour a day just fixing small issues like printer connections, wireless glitches, USB problems and etc. I believe even the lousiest distro of Linux would solve these before roll-out.

You might say fine, we know it all and Vista is there for almost a year now, but the question is what have we done? Did we do anything? Did we converted to another platform? Or just trying to cope with the situation quietly.

Today I converted another colleague of mine to get a Mac and I’m so proud of it! I don’t work for Apple and I’m not just a fan, but I was using Windows since version 3.0 and I got disappointed more on each version debut. This is not the way you (Microsoft) keep customers loyal unless you don’t care because you know that nobody can’t do anything about you running a info-political monopoly.

All that “security” stuff hidden behind the shiny GUI of Vista worries me that the privacy in the free world, not by armies or dictators, but by the very fruit of the freedom, is endangered.

We struggle with Windows security holes, and Norton Antivirus -The Jesus of the computers- and yet nothing is getting better. You can bring as much as rationale as you can about hackers being smarter and technology is being more advanced or even blame the poor Open Source cult! But wait a moment! This endless chain of fear and consumption, the story of good and evil, is also drifted into IT and we can officially say that we are s****ed!

I wonder how the Chinese government stopped (or slowed down) the “Red Linux” project and signed a peace agreement with Microsoft while Bill Gates is welcomed like a president in their socialist country. If it’s not political, the somebody please enlighten me! It is worth remembering how the search engines censor information for Chinese government while fellow citizens of the Earth demonstrate everywhere for the Tibet to be freed!