Despite recent outages at online retailer Amazon.com, technology experts feel that the outlook for cloud computing is bright. Google executive, Rishi Chandra, said that the company is going after enterprise business in part because organizations are ready to embrace cloud computing. The reliability of services such as Gmail and ubiquitous access to broadband Internet have led to the rising interest in cloud computing, Chandra added. Gmail, Google’s free Web-based e-mail service, is a basic example of cloud computing. In Gmail, users access the application and data via the Web rather than from a local e-mail server and messages are saved in the cloud, so to speak, and not on a user’s laptop or desktop PC. However, one of the biggest hurdles that the technology must overcome is enabling users to access data and applications when the Internet is not available. To address this issue, Google has recently begun to offer off-line versions of its Google Apps.
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