Cloud Computing: "Gimmie Some of that Good Fluff"

So businesses that would normally sell you software to implement internally instead host their technology and you pay to access that hosted technology. Salesforce.com is a classic example of a company that has been doing this for many years. You just log on to the internet to access the information and customise the application for your business. There is an interesting video that explains this quite simply.

The benefits of cloud computing include faster deployment of technology solutions, lower costs, simpler management, less internal IT infrastructure and greater flexibility to get information when and where you need it. Companies can avoid capital expenditure on internal infrastructures to store data and instead can rent the facilities from external vendors. People can access information via the internet no matter which device they are using (PDA, mobile etc) and do not need to install software on their computer. It will change the way we work and live, since we will gradually get used to the idea of accessing most of the applications or software that we need, through internet browsers instead of by installing them on our computers.

So how has this affected the way companies do business in relation to how they manage global content? SDL has been providing hosted technologies through the cloud for many years now. It lets its customers decide whether they want to purchase and implement in-house or whether they want to access the technology via a browser, where the system is hosted in a secure data center. There are many customers that opt for this and despite the challenging economic environment of the last year, we have seen around 10% growth in the numbers of words going through our hosted solutions. So certainly this year, there has been a trend towards hosted solutions in localization.

Watch this space – in the New Year I’ll be blogging about how cloud computing will impact the way in which we manage content and language in the future…