Have you heard enough about it to fill in the blanks? If you haven’t, I’m referring to ‘the cloud’? ‘ the tech industry’s newest piece of marketing wonderment. In layman’s terms, ‘the cloud’? is all about cloud computing ‘ where storage of all your personal pictures, music files and other tidbits live in a storage ‘cloud’? that hovers out in cyberspace and becomes accessible from any device. Those devices could be multiple computers, tablets, smart phones or any other internet-enabled device. In short, cloud computing isn’t that much different than the networked nodes of yester-year, but has certainly gained a resurgence in popularity and marketing prosperity.
Creating a cloud-based storage system isn’t limited to a single manufacturer, but in a stroke of marketing genius, Microsoft is working to quickly own the term. Their latest campaign, which features constant references of ‘to the cloud’? cleverly builds ownership of the idea and the term for Microsoft. This is likely to pay off in about 8-12 months when mainstreamers begin building, maintaining and utilizing their own cloud networks.
There are many opinions out there that Microsoft is being deceptive by trying to take ownership of ‘the cloud’? and showcasing technologies that don’t necessarily need ‘clouds’ to exist. But to that logic, we should also be mad at Coke for trying to own ‘happiness’? or Walmart for trying to encourage us all to ‘live better.’? These companies are making claims about what their brands can do for consumers ‘ so who really cares if they step outside the boundaries a little?
You be the judge.
