Category: Virtualisation

The digital revolution will allow cloud computing to overtake PCs as the hub of applications, online services and content streaming in homes and businesses.

That is the view of Gartner, which has suggested the personal cloud will rise to the top of the market by 2014.

Explaining the feature, research director at the body Michael Gartenberg said: "It encompasses content storage, synchronisation, sharing and streaming, as well as context-based access."

Gartner went on to explain that the cloud can take care of all manner of business, consumer and government matters. Intriguingly, no company yet has domination of the market, so its prospective growth opens up an opportunity for vendors.

The importance of the cloud was summed up recently by the International Data Corporation, as it said one in five executives in Australia and New Zealand overrule their IT bosses to use it when it is not part of their setup.

However, with such tremendous growth expected, it may be that fewer firms omit it from their operations as time goes by.

Posted by Jamie Rees