For those of you out there who have not yet heard of the term Cloud Computing or just don’t know what it means, here is the lowdown.
Cloud computing gets its name from the cloud symbol that is normally used in network diagrams to represent the Internet.
Most of you are very familiar with the way conventional computing works, you have a standalone computer with the programs that you purchased and use regularly installed on the hard drive. You normally store all you documents, pictures, music and videos on the computers internal hard drive, or on an external hard drive that you connect directly to your computer.
You may also be familiar with the way that a business computer network works. You have some type of central server housed at your business location that more than one computer connects to in order to access shared programs and data.
Although these two scenarios are somewhat different, they are the same in that the person who owns the standalone computer or computer network, had to purchase or lease the equipment and must maintain it at there expense.
Cloud computing takes a different approach, think of it as renting all the computing power, programs and storage space you need. With cloud computing the end user merely has to pay the monthly fee to be able to connect to the resources that they need to use through the Internet.
You normally don’t have to worry too much about the speed of the computer that you are using to connect to the Cloud because all the processing is done by the Servers that you are connecting to. You also do not need to worry about backing up your data as the data you are using is typically backed up by the company that you are using in the Cloud.
This all sounds great right? But there are some down sides to cloud computing.
What if you do not have access to the Internet because your connection is down or you are not in an area that has Wifi or Cellular access? You would not be able to access your cloud applications or data.
Also not all programs are available for access in the cloud, and some programs just will not work well in the cloud because they require very fast dedicated computers and extremely fast networks.
And of course we all know some people are just not comfortable putting personal or company data out on the Internet where they do not have complete control over that data and the security of it.
This concept has been around for quit awhile, and I am sure some of you have already used some of these type of services, maybe without knowing it and without the fancy name.