Its getting "cloud"y out here

Firstly, apologies for the pun, but it IS getting overcast in Bangalore the last few days. I've noticed that I've quite naturally migrated away from most desktop apps towards a "cloud" based solution. Or as we used to say a year ago - online solutions.

But, hype and buzzwords aside, I really only took notice the last couple of weeks since my work laptop fried and I've been messing around with multiple laptops. What popped out was that I really didn't need to install much to keep going at work because I had been progressively preferring online solutions to desktop ones.

Outlook Desktop -> Outlook Web Access.

The Microsoft OWA 2012 release has done a tremendous job of ensuring desktop parity in feature and UX which has made the transition so simple that i didn't even notice that i had stopped using the desktop client. The web client retains many of the keyboard short cuts, alert sounds and visuals that are really key to bringing the full experience to the net. The best part is that unlike the previous versions, this web client works well across most of the browsers.

Visio -> Lucid Chart, Gliffy

I feel a little sad for Visio. As an architect, I should have loved this product. This was supposed to my home where i merrily drew boxes and layers and clouds building enterprise dreams of interconnected systems. But Visio let me down with their latest 2013 release. I don't know what segment the team targets, but the software is unnecessarily bloated with all sorts of themes and art works, but makes a complete hash of the most simple thing that I need - connecting shapes easily and in an intuitive manner.

The best part is that at my workplace, Lucid Chart is integrated with the collaboration platform - JIVE, making it even simpler to move away from Visio

Notepad -> Writability

Ok - so this one may be a bit of stretch because it really is javascript code that enables you to write in the browser. But if you're signed into chrome bookmarks get ported over to the instance and its almost like an application in the cloud.

Windows Live Writer -> Blogger.com editor.

I've waited a long time for this. Windows live writer was a great alternative to Rich text areas for creating blog content. But i recently logged into blogger and found the new editor powerful enough to discard live writer. In fact, this single change is allowing me to blog a lot more. I don't know if other engines have powerful editors, but I'm happy to stick with my Google profile and hence blogger.

Word -> Jive

Now this may not really be an option for everyone, but at my workplace we've deployed Jive for business collaboration and I am amazed at the transformation it has brought about to the company DNA. What once used to be silo'ed divisions with serpentine communication channels is now a thriving community of collaborators. I can't say enough about this. Every large organization needs this.

Strictly speaking, there isn't a direct mapping from Word to Jive, but because of the platform I rarely create documents. Instead the platform allows me to create blog posts.

Skype -> Google + 

I still use skype on a daily basis because of my perception that the call quality is better. For personal calls, where I'm willing to live with a little more disturbance, I tend to use the Google + hangouts. Strangely enough, google+ has more features than skype - most notably the ability to screen share

Of course there are some applications I use on a regular basis that simply don't have equivalent replacements yet -

• IDEs - Visual Studio
• Excel 
• Media Players (but for music only i use a combination of sound cloud, pandora etc.. )

I have a bunch of other applications but they are mostly BECAUSE i am on a desktop and would be irrelevant in a fully cloudy world - zip software, networking stuff, media players, editors.

The future of desktop applications does indeed look bleak.