Bill Gates High on Cloud Storage

By Paul Travis

August 29, 2008

Microsoft co-founder thinks cloud storage will advance faster than cloud computing

Bill Gates knows something about technology adoption trends. The co-founder and leader of Microsoft for the past 30 years played a major role in the introduction or popularization of many new technologies in business and consumer markets. And he thinks online storage services, or cloud storage, is one of those trends whose time has come.

Gates is retiring from his job as chief software architect and his day-to-day work at the company to devote his time to his foundation. But he still has strong opinions on technology trends. In a lengthy “exit interview” in the latest issue of PC Magazine, Gates talks about a wide variety of topics — including cloud computing and storage.

The main question, according to Gates, is a long-standing one: “Where is computing being done, right next to you or far away?” After discussing the move from time-sharing computing to desktop computing to Internet computing, he says. “Now we are in a world where you can get the best of both worlds, when you call a subroutine, that subroutine can exist on another computer across the Internet and they think they are calling a local subroutine.”

Gates makes a distinction between storage in the cloud and computing in the cloud. “People get confused. There is storage in the cloud, which is …

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