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More year end wrap up… There is a quiet revolution happening with how we use software and it will soon drive massive changes in the technology world, and our ways of operating and that is the change from locally based applications that run off our computers hard drive, to Web based software that we run over the Internet. Five years ago, almost all software was run on a local machine, or the corporate servers. Now just about every kind of application is delivered in a software as a service model (Salesforce.com, NetSuite, ZOHO.com applications.) We also have huge amounts of people using eCommunites like MySpace and Facebook, and finally a host of new Websites that offer useful services for free (yousendit.com and zamzar.com.) Add this all up and my guess is the percentage of online software usage is climbing at 10% or more each year. This in itself might not seem that interesting to you unless you play out where it takes us in the future.

Once all software can be run over the Web, the hardware requirements for laptops change dramatically because you no longer need a hard drive. Where would your data go? It gets stored on remote services like xdrive.com, evault.com, or the S3 service at Amazon. The nice side benefit of this is it is likely much safer than on your hard drive where it could be stolen, lost or corrupted. Not to mention, you can access your information over the Web from any device if it is stored remotely. Besides the lack of need for a hard drive, you also can use a completely different processor because the processing power now happens remotely where the application is running. This means what you need is simply a means for communicating - keyboard, voice, etc., a screen, and a fast connection. For my two cents, I can’t wait to have everything stored remotely and running on someone else’s hard drive. Faster, safer and lighter hardware - what’s not to like!!

So let’s go further… Now that we can redo the profile of the laptop, we have the ability to change the device all together. We can realistically build wearable devices with tiny head mounted displays, and keyboards that are built into our sleeves. All of this because we are getting comfortable running applications over the Web. The last bastion of local software was MS Office, and now even that will be offered over the Web in 2008, with Google following closely behind pushing their online Office knock off; Google Docs. I have noticed a distinct shift in college kids towards using all online software and it makes me smile because I see them hit the work world and drive their way of doing things into the organization. Oh, let us not forget, it is much cheaper to run software this way - and many times free because of ad supported models. Yes, this will change things immensely…

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