Cloud Computing and Consumer Electronics: A Perfect Match or a Hidden Storm? [Soapbox]

Cloud computing has emerged strongly into the consumer domain. As industry competes to gain market share from the rapidly growing multitudes of cloud-IT users, both network and data center infrastructures will grow more rapidly than anticipated driven bv new thin-client CE devices. The challenge for the designers of new devices and associated applications and services will be how to minimize the digital waste in terms of unnecessary data transport and network storage. Energy is a key mantra here - new devices need to be network savvy and designed to optimize data transport and storage in a wider resource context and time frame than in the past.