Cloud Computing, Software as a Service, Application Service Providers, Virtual Desktops and Live Workspaces. Just some of the terms which have been bandied about over the past few years. With Windows Live Mesh, now available as a Public Beta as part of the ‘Wave 3′ release of Windows Live I sense these technologies coming of age and are ready to hit the mainstream. Big time.

So what’s it all about and why does it matter?

Live Mesh allows users to access and share their files seamlessly across the web and across multiple devices. So nothing really new there. It also allows users to share applications – again cool perhaps, but not altogether groundbreaking. Live Desktop looks and works in much the same way as your computer desktop (if you use Vista, that is) making it instantly familiar, intuitive and a breeze to use. Nice, fast and funky; but again we’ve seen most of this before.

Scratch a little deeper and some of the real potential of this new platform reveals itself. Live Mesh allows synchronisation between multiple devices (including mobile and macs), and people, providing an open, shared workspace in which diverse and distributed teams can collaborate. A ‘feed’ provides up to the minute information on users activity in relation to the workspace.

The world is changing fast and with the increasing pressures on business to improve efficiencies, ‘green-up’ and adopt flexible mobile working, the reality is that todays combination of email, shared folders and local applications is creaking at the seams. To date, the Achilles heel of the cloud computing paradigm has been its dependence upon ‘always on’ connectivity. So when the WiFi on the train decides to have a rest or my spangly new 3G data card hits its download limit I am, to put it politely, stuffed. However, when you are offline (intentionally or otherwise), Mesh provides a client which allows you to continue work without the connection. Then, when you are back online everything you have been working on can be neatly synchronised.

As it is closely integrated with the rest of Windows, Live Mesh is a logical step towards the ‘hyperconnected’ environment which has been looming for some time. It will allow us to step meekly into this world from our familiar PC-centric environment without the quantum leap of betting our entire working lives on being always connected. I think we will like what we see.

Mesh can be previewed at www.mesh.com

Andrew will shortly be living and working for a week using only his mobile broadband connection and sharing his experience in a diary. Watch this space and wish him luck.

Commonsensical blog:

For the last ten years I’ve seen home connections change from slow dial-up sub-56k modems to always on ADSL2+ broadband connections. On a business perspective often GB fibre connections are required for businesses transferring data from one primary site to a secondary Disaster recovery site. The switch over from slow dial-up connections to broadband was an amazing leap in usability of the Internet. With dial-up connections my partner saw no use for the ‘Internet’ and was apathetic to what it could provide. 30 seconds just to connect and then waiting for pages to download, could be compared to having the latency on a long distance phone call. The communications just does not flow freely and spoils the experience.

Then along came broadband and revolutionised our way of connecting to the net making broadband one of the fasted adopted technologies of all time. But our hunger for more bandwidth continues. Watching video content online has grown exponentially which drives up the bandwidth required. Using the BBC iplayer connecting through a wii connection to my TV makes catching up with missed TV shows a doddle, and in full screen. Again buffering of streaming media spoils the experience. That is like having pauses on your TV. The next big thing is getting High Definition TV via the IP network.

So yes, I would like more bandwidth please, for the same amount of money per month too, if possible.

Most people ask why on earth do you need so much more bandwidth. Well, I was watching a James May documentry, one of the presenters off Top Gear, discussing teleportation, like on Star Trek. ‘Beem me up Scotty’. He explained that scientists had managed to teleport a photon from one point to another. The next challenge is to transfer a whole atom. Whoopee. However, if you wanted to transfer a person, you would need to transfer 40 billion atoms at the correct rotation and at the same time. I think they estimated that on a current broadband connection speeds this would take 15 years to complete the teleportation. So roll-on providing us more bandwidth and more control. We need it for future developments that have not even been thought of.

Things you might be interested in: ADSL2+