How the Apple iCloud could change computing

Source: By John Breeden II, Government Computer News

Apple made some rather impressive announcements this week. And although people will roar at the news about the new Lion OS, I think the biggest thing was the fact that the company is getting into cloud computing.

Of course, the company has to put its stamp on things, hence it’s called the iCloud. But what exactly is an iCloud? What does it mean for government? And how is it different from all the thousands of cloud-based systems GCN has written about over the years?

First, in terms of the direct effect on government agencies, there probably isn’t any, unless an agency happens to use a lot of iTunes content for presentations and things such as that. If your agency uses iTunes, that process will be a lot easier.

The coolest thing about the iCloud is that, like almost everything else Apple-related, the implementation of the cloud computing technology should be extremely intuitive once it gets fully off the ground in the fall, though some of the services are available now.

Kudos go to Apple for taking a complex topic like cloud computing and making it simply work for consumers without really having them need to think about it too much. That, more than anything else, could change the computing world.

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