Today is the 10th anniversary of the start of the International Space Station. Back in 1998 the first piece of the station was launched into orbit, commencing an ambitious exercise of international collaboration.

Space exploration is an expensive business. You need access to specialist equipment, as well as masses of computing power to track and guide your mission. But imagine this: supposing NASA (and other space agencies) were to throw open their doors and allow would-be space explorers to make use of their technology and infrastructure.

Okay, there might be limits on what they could use (and sometimes costs), but imagine what could happen if any would-be space entrepreneur could get his or her hands on technology of a quality and scale that would allow them to build and launch their own rockets and space stations. Sounds fanciful?

Well, it’s only an analogy. What I’m really keen to talk about here is about getting into the metaphorical world of ‘cloud computing‘. If you’ve come across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google’s developer-focused resources, you’ve already met the world’s biggest providers of cloud computing services.

Put simply, cloud computing allows you to build and host software, as well as store data (images, files etc) without having to own your own operating systems. Just by having access to the Internet, you - and your co-workers and customers - can run applications, operate business processes and access services, without the need for owning and managing the infrastructure yourself.

In a sense, it’s as liberating as being freed from an earth-bound existence. Wherever you are, as long as you can connect to the web, all the data storage and computing power you want is there at your fingertips. No more need to worry about capacity, maintenance and obsolescence, somebody else will do that for you (okay, at a price, depending on what you want).

Not only can owning your own systems and data servers be expensive and time consuming, few companies can afford to invest in the sort of infrastructure that allows them to scale up when demand surges. Consider a situation where you suddenly had a million customers wanting to download pdfs from your site, or view an online video; if you’re just your own little island of storage and processing, you’re going to get clogged up pretty quickly.

Which is where access to bigger providers comes in. But the paradigm of cloud-working also goes for smaller providers offering outsourced Internet services. We would say this, of course, but why would you want to maintain your own creaking infrastructure - often difficult for staff to access - when someone else can host and deliver the data and applications you need across the web?

And here-in lies some of the complexity of the ‘cloud’ metaphor. In truth, the movement we’re talking about here is about ‘clouds’ - some bigger than others; some with different properties than others. But the underlying principle is the same: access to technology that an individual organisation (especially small and medium sized ones) could only dream about.

It’s a world that’s enabling developers and micro-business to create and deliver a host of new online services, secure in the knowledge that is has a platform that is powerful and scalable if demand hits a spike. NASA might not be opening the doors to such people and organisations; but the infrastructure providers of the cloud certainly are.

We’re Insiteability - intrepid web explorers from Oxfordshire, Surrey and London, brought together by our passion for doing things on and with the web. It’s what we “do”.

This blog is where we’ll be sharing our thoughts on what’s going on and what really matters - talking about anything that we think is interesting for smart organisations, and documenting our journeys and discoveries.

The Fascinating World under the Surf

It’s a complicated but wonderful world - web-side. So complicated it can be difficult to work out how best to exploit the web for your own organisation. It’s even more difficult to predict the future, let alone guess what the next “big web thing” will be. But we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears peeled so that we can let you know what’s going on, helping you think about how to exploit the opportunities of the web for your organisation.

We’ve got big plans for the blog and for Insiteability as a whole, so stay in touch with us here! We’ll be bringing you:

• Our personal views - Keeping up-to-date with things going on in business and on the web
• Things we like - Sharing our top choices of web resources
• 3rd Sector - A focussed view of what’s happening web-wise in the 3rd Sector and what innovations charities and not-for-profits can use to improve
• How to’s - Our tips and tricks for anyone managing websites and services

We’d love to hear what you think, so please do get involved and suggest new areas for us to cover.

In the meantime

Here’s a video from Candid Camera that Joshua Porter played during his dconstruct talk “Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design“, last September - it’s a classic!