In the last two weeks I have been experimenting with various cloud solutions to finally move all my day-to-day data to the cloud.  It became a necessity when I bought a tablet to add to my array of devices and PCs that I use regularly.  It is amazing what a mess that still is and what a frustrating experiment!  No one has a nice, seamlessly integrated cloud offering for consumers, not even Google! Various vendors address pieces of the solution like storage, music, photos etc., but it all needs to be "integrated" by the users themselves.  Apple will integrate it nicely with the iCloud and will once again be ahead of everyone else by simply taking existing technologies and integrating them into a seamless offering with marvelous marketing behind it!

This story becomes even more interesting when you consider that I have "pitched" the personal cloud story to Dell's consumer Senior VP in March of 2007!  You can see my presentation attached below.  At that time I thought that a cloud solution that synchronizes all data between Dell systems and devices could be a huge differentiator - see slide 5!  My pitch was to make that the focus of the Dell consumer strategy - he listened but then escorted me out of the meeting room and I fell pray to the "not invented here" syndrome.  Sometimes this is what you get for being a bit too visionary.

Here is a list of the services I have to use to replicate the experience of a complete cloud offering for a consumer:

1. Ubuntu One - for document storage and syncing with all my devices.
2. Google Docs - for sharing documents with people (still can't use it effectively as an office replacement).
3. Amazon Cloud Player - for listening and downloading music to all my devices.
4. Google Picasa - for photo management and syncing (still need Ubuntu One to upload a photo automatically after it is taken)
5. My trusted old home server for mass storage of all of our files.
6. Google Apps for email and calendaring - hands down the best solution out there!

Welcome to the cloud...