What is cloud computing? Imagine that when you visit the National Palace Museum, instead of lugging around a PDA or audio guide device, when you approach an exhibit, such as the famous Jadeite Cabbage, your cell phone automatically displays a multimedia introduction, detailing the history of the piece through visuals, text and audio, and highlights the latest products based on the piece introduced by the museum. If your mobile phone has GPRS capability, they can connect with the National Palace Museum and the telecom operator simultaneously, and the Remote Control Center can provide information you may need at appropriate times. Just a dream? Don't be too quick to say so -- as a matter of fact, through cloud computing, things that may once have been fascinating concepts in sci-fi novels and movies may very soon be unremarkable parts of everyday life. According to a report in issue 279 of Global Views Monthly, cloud computing has become an area of intense competition for Google, Microsoft, and other major corporations. In 2008, cloud computing produced revenues of $46.4 billion and it is estimated revenues will increase to $150.1 billion by 2013.

What exactly is cloud computing? Basically, cloud computing is when all application software and data is stored on a network. As long as you're in the network service area and can connect to the network, you can obtain the data you want, anywhere, anytime and on any device, to do the work you want. To give a simple example, the Google Docs service is essentially an application of cloud computing. Using Google Docs, the business plan you draft in your office does not need to be stored on a portable hard drive, let alone be sent from box A to box B; you can simply log on to the Google Docs service from home to pick up where you left off at the office.

In the future, then, according to Global Views Monthly, "Even if businesses or individuals do not have high performance computers or massive databases, as long as they can go online, they will also be able to process large amounts of data." For example, through the popular Kindle, introduced by Amazon last year, you can download a 200-300 page book in about half a minute, thanks to cloud computing.

In Taiwan, Trend Micro, Chunghwa Telecom, Foxconn, Institute for Information Industry (III) and other companies and organizations have also begun promoting cloud computing. At this stage, Taiwan's prospects in terms of digital content are quite good, and if cloud computing can be combined with digital content, this should provide considerable opportunities for the future development of Taiwanese industry. It can be expected that cloud computing will lead to stunning changes in our lives and the way businesses operate.