Cloud User Experience
Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 12:16AM I first wrote about the concept of the Total User Experience some fifteen years ago. B
ack then it was all about finding out about a product, going to a store to buy it, actually buying it, unboxing it, installing it, using it, getting help with using it, getting additional support when the help didn't help, and upgrading or uninstalling it. During this time virtually all applications ran right on your computer and the resulting files created were saved there as well. We've witnessed a gradual evolution of that total user experience with more and more of it involving the web. Advertising went online, then buying and directly downloading products. Increasingly, help and support have been available over the web too. The last aspect of the user experience to move to the web is the application itself and its data.
The move of all aspects of what used to comprise the total user experience to the web has, interestingly, created a new total user experience focussed on the online experience itself. Perhaps the most important aspect of that experience in staying connected online.
Most people's concerns regarding so-called cloud computing center on the uptime of the cloud vender's service. While this is important, the service interuptions from the major vendors have been very infrequent and relatively brief. However, an often overlooked aspect of the cloud user experience is the uptime of ISPs and company and home networking systems.
I had a disruption of service from my ISP yesterday for about five hours. This prevented me from doing my work and anything else online. The support staff, while friendly, didn't seem to understand or appreciate how serious a problem like this is when you're using cloud computing. ISPs have to realize their importance in the total cloud user experience for it to work effectively. This is an aspect of cloud computing that is often disregarded. I believe it is critically important and may well turn out to be the weak link in the cloud computing strategy unless ISPs come to understand their new role in the total cloud computing user experience.
As always, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this topic via the comment mechanism.
Reader Comments (4)
Why to go for cloud computing?
when storage is getting cheaper every day for home or office computers?
Thanks for the comment. The benefits of cloud computer are generally assumed to be direct access to your applications and data from a browser on any computer anywhere, being able to use the latest version of the application, no need to update applications, having data stored on a vendor's servers with appropriate backups, and so forth.
Take the disruption of service scenario even a step farther. For many home users and SMB companies, the level of technical skill is not great. There's now more possible points of failure... is it my browser? my computer? my router? my modem? my ISP? the actual cloud service/app?
Just because an app/service is in the cloud doesn't always mean it's "easy to manage".
I've been slowly testing the waters of cloud computing and thanks to things such as Google Docs and more recently Dropbox I am getting a little spoiled.
One thing that I'm seeing is a definite need for a roll-your-own bandwidth solution for exactly the reason stated above. I like not having to carry around (and lose)a flash drive, but I also hate getting hamstrung when I can't get online ergo I usually have my tetherable cell phone and USB cable handy.
Only drawback is when I'm not in a 3G cell - in which case I'm better off using an etch-a-sketch.
-D