The Future of Cloud Computing, trends to watch

One of the many great things about having our offices at the DaVinci Vault (a collaborative coworking facility much like the "hacker dojo's" that have sprouted up in the Bay Area and elsewhere), is the opportunity to take part in several events that the DaVinci Institute offers.

Recently, we got invited to speak at one of these events about "The Future of Cloud Computing". As the old saw goes, "when you teach, you learn", and the topic was a blast to research and format into a presentation.

Here's a link to the slide deck we used: http://prezi.com/asek-fsyvgzo/the-future-of-cloud-computing/. We ended up with well over 2 hours worth of material from the talk, and we just left that content in the slide deck as a bunch of hidden easter eggs -- please feel free to click around the slide deck to discover additional information that we didn't have time to present.

Video of the talk:

Video of the Panel Discussion:

In the presentation, we walked through the following 5 distinct areas:

1. Defining "the Cloud" -- nearly everyone is using it, but even tecchies are oftentimes confounded by what, exactly, Cloud computing is. We'll take a look at what it means, and establish some common vocabulary for the rest of the talk.

2. Present Day capabilities -- The future of the cloud is going to be awesome, but in reality, so is the present. We'll delve into some ways that Cloud technologies are currently being used by enterprising companies and individuals. We'll also walk through some excellent ways that individuals and companies can start to leverage the Cloud to their benefit.

3. Near Future -- Looking over the next 5 years, we've discovered some amazing ways that the Cloud will begin to affect our personal and business lives. From healthcare to Robotics and AI, the influence of Cloud Computing will be felt by all.

4. Mid-Future -- In the timeframe of 5-15 years from now, Cloud Computing is likely to become ubiquitous, it's impacts in Education will enable anyone with a computer and 'Net access to attain a world-class education, and we may see the passing of the technology baton from America to China and/or India -- two countries in absolute need of the scale which the Cloud can provide.

5. Far-Future -- Although 15 years doesn't seem extremely far off, in the world of computing, it's an eternity. We're going to see computers attain the intellectual capacity of the human brain, we're going to see language issues become irrelevant, and we're likely to see a huge migration of labor -- from humans to robots. It could all go utopia or dystopia, and each of us will have our say in that outcome.

If you attended or watched the presentation online, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please share in the boxes below.