Apple has been on a roll lately, and that success is expected to continue with its newest cloud service offering, dubbed – what else? – iCloud.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, returning once again from a medical leave of absence, introduced iCloud at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference Monday and explained how the new service will become the centerpiece for Apple's cloud strategy.
The iCloud service, which will be released with Apple's iOS 5 this fall, will allow users to store music, media, applications, documents and other content to Apple's cloud. The new service looks to compete with other consumer-focused cloud offerings such as the Amazon Cloud Player and Amazon Cloud Drive.
The forthcoming release of iCloud also represents a shift in Apple's cloud strategy, which began with MobileMe, a suite of online-based productivity and communication applications that was heavily criticized following its release in 2008. Apple announced that iCloud will replace MobileMe, which will officially shut down next June.
But will iCloud get Apple's cloud strategy on the right track? What are the features that will separate Apple's service from the competition? And can Apple sway business users to flock to iCloud?
CRN editors Rob Wright and Andrew Hickey discuss those questions and more as they delve into the changing cloud computing landscape. The two also look at other recent cloud-related news, such as HP's $2 billion investment to help finance cloud deployments and the unfortunate news that Amazon's AWS cloud is hosting malware, according to security researchers at Kaspersky Lab.
Listen to the latest CRN Podcast on Apple's iCloud and the maturing cloud market.
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