The Future is in the Cloud

Can cloud computing catapult NZ onto a global stage?  

In case you missed it, the future is in the cloud.

By Mark Revington

Published in Unlimited, February 2009 

Want to go offshore and reach a large online market in a hurry but don’t have capital to buy the necessary IT hardware? The cloud is your answer. There’s one obvious drawback: you may never know at any given minute where in the world your data is. And cloud computing is both deceptively simple and terribly complex.

It was hard to miss the hype towards the end of last year. According to the Economist, there’s nothing the computer industry likes better than a big new idea — followed by a big fight, as different companies compete to exploit it. Every man and his dog know this is a big play and they’re all fighting to get aboard. The usual suspects are there — Microsoft, Google and a bunch of players who want to provide storage or cloud services.

And that well-known IT company, Amazon. Yes, the online retailer has become a major player in the cloud. When Dunedin-based TicketDirect said it planned to take on the global giants of the ticketing world using Microsoft’s new Azure cloud computing platform late last year, it seemed like the perfect Kiwi confluence between startups or fast growth companies and the cloud.