In these days of hunkering down, cutting back and getting by it’s neat to talk to a venture-backed startup that’s out to change the world. The SIMtone Corp. wants to put the Internet “cloud” on steroids, feeding you everything from processing power to storage and even the user interface on your application from the cloud. Goodbye Microsoft and Intel, presumably, as you’ll need neither an operating system nor a processor – just a modern day version of the dumb terminals once used to access mainframe applications.
Oh, and who will be providing these incredibly rich, incredibly reliable cloud computing services to the starving masses? The telephone companies. Really.
As Chairman and CEO Mario Dal Canto sees it, today’s cloud computing environments require the use of proprietary protocols and expensive, complex PCs at the user end. As the price of bandwidth plummets, and ever-more-powerful virtualization makes it possible to effortlessly scale Internet-based application hosting, SIMtone says to move all – and they do mean ALL – the heavy lifting to the cloud.
The benefits for users? Imagine being able to upgrade your processor, your memory, the size of your hard drive or your application suite with the click of a mouse. Imagine very, very low-cost mini notebooks like SIMtone’s own SNAPbook essentially given away with service plans the way cell phones are now. Imagine low-cost, maintenance-free computing for small business, education or low-income customers.
There are, of course, a few steps between here and the promised land. One is that wireless broadband is not yet as ubiquitous in the U.S. as in other countries (which is why the SIMtone model has more traction in other parts of the world.) Another is that nervous customers (read: me) are not yet ready to trust all their data, all their ability to communicate, all their ability to even write a note to a wireless connection.
Others are apparently bolder: SIMtone says it has ten “very strong engagements” to provide its services management infrastructure to telcos around the world, and that the first services will roll out later this year. For the telcos, he says, it’s a way to break out of the price wars that come with offering voice and data commodity services. (Several telcos have already announced cloud offerings, but nothing as dramatic as what SIMtone plans.) And it may be just the thing for IT customers short of capital budgets for new equipment, and consumers short on money and PC know-how.
For example: I know a fellow who, working with a wireless mouse from his easy chair, doesn’t know how to run a virus scan but can find and watch any 60s and ‘70s sitcom on the 32” flat-panel hooked to his Vista desktop. Would he go for an easy-to-use, pay-by -the month, no-computer link to the Web? To quote a certain vice presidential candidate, you betcha.
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