The Cloud

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Well I didn't expect to be writing this as my next blog post.  

I'm currently sat in my sisters house in South Perth, Australia.  The problem is I should be sat at my desk back in the UK, but because of the ongoing chaos in Europe caused by a cloud of ash, my family and I have been forced to extend our holiday for an additional 10 days (that's assuming todays airspace opening remains in place until our rebooked flight on Sunday).  It got me thinking about what I would do if I remain stuck here (especially considering insurance doesn't cover lost wage earnings!)...

Presently I have managed to borrow a laptop and have access to the internet on that at my sisters house.  That has enabled me to gain access remotely to our email system at work, but thats about it (file access is very flaky at best without a vpn connection).  Aside from some work that I brought with me (sad I know, but old habits die hard), I have no further access to any of my current files and more importantly no access to software to manipulate it with if I could (someone is emailing me something to get stuck into I hope).  This leaves me in the position of being unable to work - if I strecth into next week I'm looking to download and install the software onto this laptop and try to work that way - here's hoping it doesn't get to that!

There is a better way on the horizon though.  At AU last year we all heard about Project Twitch (and undoubtedly most bloggers already knew) and how its is coming to us all.  The concept is well explained in this youtube video, but basically it translates as Autodesk software (Currently AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and Maya) available to subscribers with nothing more than a browser and an internet connection.  Currently this is under trial, and following a geographic lock-down on its access, users are now only hampered by their data connections.  The project enables full use of the software and in future promises all of the features such as saving your work and printing, exporting and so on.  All this from software run on someone else's server with no install required - utilising the power of 'The Cloud' as Carl Bass called it in his keynote address at AU 2009.  In the situation I am now faced with, this would be a massive leap forward.  The only question I ask is where the files are saved - given my experience at the moment, it would only work if your files were stored with the software and remained remotely accessible - otherwise the portability of the software is somewhat diluted.  But of course that open up a whole host of other issues and I'm pretty sure that service won't be available from Autodesk (not sure I would want the responsibility of keeping other peoples files, or whether commercially sensitive info could be stored this way).

So I guess for now I'm stuck with working on as much as possible from afar.  At least I have holiday left to take (though none left for the rest of the year now!), and with a bit of luck and a fair wind (!!) I should be back to normal next week (fingers crossed - be good to me Emirates).  I'll just have to look forward to a future when we don't need software installs anymore - just like our IT department...

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