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Cloud(s) gather(s) pace – Monaco and Microsoft, not volcanic ash

Business | Sport | Technology

By Chris Ritchie

The global tour by the Formula 1 teams has arrived in Monaco for the most glamorous and prestigious race of the year. It attracts the rich and famous from far and wide, many of whom sit in traffic jams composed entirely of Ferraris, much to the amusement of those of us without them. But glamour and opulence aside, this race weekend is all about challenges.

It’s a challenge for the teams normally as a result of the lack of space and the logistics issues arising from everything being in different places, 10 minutes walk apart. This year, the set up has even more pressurised as the entire paddock infrastructure had to be dismantled in Barcelona on Sunday night only to be built again in the confines of Monaco in time for practice on Thursday – a day earlier than the other races. At least these two races are geographically close together and with the teams driving between races in Europe, the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud, threatening air travel again in the last week, didn’t impact proceedings. At the end of the season teams will need to get from Brazil across to Abu Dhabi for the final race of the season on consecutive weekends.

It’s also a challenge for the drivers. Jenson Button was interviewed earlier in the weekend and said that there is nothing quite like hooking up a great lap at Monaco, and the challenge of the race is to do that for 78 laps without putting a wheel wrong. The weather forecast for the weekend shows some potential clouds brewing. There was already some light rain in practice, but if this materialises in any quantity during qualifying or the race then we could be in for quite a spectacle.

Cloud is also on the agenda for Microsoft this week as the software giant launches its Office 2010 suite. Partially in response to Google Docs, which has been available for a while, but in fairness also to positioning Microsoft firmly in the growing trend for cloud computing, the company is now offering a free online version called Office Web Apps. It is also being offered free to all Facebook users. It will be interesting to track what sort of traction this develops in the coming months.

So clouds might impact the entertainment factor of F1 this weekend, but the cloud is also starting to impact the way users and enterprises access computing. It will be an interesting journey that we and our clients will be following.

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