There's been a lot of news-perhaps "hype" is a better word-about "cloud computing." So, maybe we should ask what, exactly, is "cloud computing?"
Fact is, cloud computing has been around for a long, long time, going back 20 years or more. "Cloud computing" as a term, however, is only a fairly recent marketing development, although it entails some more recent advancements.
As a very rudimentary example, take e-mail. E-mail has never really been stored on your personal computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. No, it's always been shunted off to a server somewhere where it can be accessed remotely.
In other words, e-mail has always been available from "the cloud" or at least "a cloud." So, if you've sent an e-mail at any time over the past, well, since e-mail has existed, you've done so over "a cloud."
Or, consider online forums. Those are all hosted remotely, on a distant server or servers. They've certainly never existed on your own computing device, but since it's always felt seamless from your point-of-view, it just seemed like you were conducting all the forum posts from your own computer.
Practically everything conducted on-line is done through a "cloud." Have you purchased something from Amazon.com? Well, that was cloud computing. Do you, unfortunately, remember the early days of AOL? That was cloud computing in its earliest stages.
If you have a Facebook account, every time you access it you're engaging in cloud computing. Gmail. Instagram. Tumblr. MySpace. That's all cloud computing.
So what does "cloud computing" mean in the modern context? Well, that's a tricky question. Cloud computing, as the term implies today, means being able to use applications remotely over the Internet to conduct personal and professional tasks, which isn't far removed from doing e-mail, but there are distinctions.
In today's world of tablets and smart phones, the computing power isn't available to perform the same work as was done on personal computers of the past. However, using those tablets and smart phones, you are able to access, via the Internet, external and internal servers and server banks that are incredibly more powerful than their previous PC predecessors, and those servers can seamlessly host all those applications (apps) and serve them right to the palm of your hand. And these servers exist, like clouds in far away skies you cannot see, continuously moving and processing billions of bits of data to and from where ever it comes and goes.
And that's now referred to as "the cloud."
The drawback to "the cloud," of course, is it means those remote servers are uploaded routinely with every image, text or random thought you decide to send to them. This means they can instantly become fodder for data searches and data mining, which can, in turn, become information that can come back to haunt you, and everyone, or at least be turned into targeted advertising, which is annoying enough by itself.
Although these data clouds, like actual clouds, are pretty much ignored by most in our day-to-day lives, they play a crucial role in our high speed data-dependent world. So, the data clouds are as established as they are ominous. Now that you understand a bit more about cloud computing, remember two very important points: Always try to protect yourself, and, without question, make every effort to protect your most important data.
Fact is, cloud computing has been around for a long, long time, going back 20 years or more. "Cloud computing" as a term, however, is only a fairly recent marketing development, although it entails some more recent advancements.
As a very rudimentary example, take e-mail. E-mail has never really been stored on your personal computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. No, it's always been shunted off to a server somewhere where it can be accessed remotely.
In other words, e-mail has always been available from "the cloud" or at least "a cloud." So, if you've sent an e-mail at any time over the past, well, since e-mail has existed, you've done so over "a cloud."
Or, consider online forums. Those are all hosted remotely, on a distant server or servers. They've certainly never existed on your own computing device, but since it's always felt seamless from your point-of-view, it just seemed like you were conducting all the forum posts from your own computer.
Practically everything conducted on-line is done through a "cloud." Have you purchased something from Amazon.com? Well, that was cloud computing. Do you, unfortunately, remember the early days of AOL? That was cloud computing in its earliest stages.
If you have a Facebook account, every time you access it you're engaging in cloud computing. Gmail. Instagram. Tumblr. MySpace. That's all cloud computing.
So what does "cloud computing" mean in the modern context? Well, that's a tricky question. Cloud computing, as the term implies today, means being able to use applications remotely over the Internet to conduct personal and professional tasks, which isn't far removed from doing e-mail, but there are distinctions.
In today's world of tablets and smart phones, the computing power isn't available to perform the same work as was done on personal computers of the past. However, using those tablets and smart phones, you are able to access, via the Internet, external and internal servers and server banks that are incredibly more powerful than their previous PC predecessors, and those servers can seamlessly host all those applications (apps) and serve them right to the palm of your hand. And these servers exist, like clouds in far away skies you cannot see, continuously moving and processing billions of bits of data to and from where ever it comes and goes.
And that's now referred to as "the cloud."
The drawback to "the cloud," of course, is it means those remote servers are uploaded routinely with every image, text or random thought you decide to send to them. This means they can instantly become fodder for data searches and data mining, which can, in turn, become information that can come back to haunt you, and everyone, or at least be turned into targeted advertising, which is annoying enough by itself.
Although these data clouds, like actual clouds, are pretty much ignored by most in our day-to-day lives, they play a crucial role in our high speed data-dependent world. So, the data clouds are as established as they are ominous. Now that you understand a bit more about cloud computing, remember two very important points: Always try to protect yourself, and, without question, make every effort to protect your most important data.
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