What the Heck is This ‘Cloud’ Thing?
By Steve Day, Digital Media Director
You may have seen this series of “To the Cloud” TV commercials from Microsoft, and noticed that a lot of tech companies have recently been talking about “the cloud.” If you’ve been wondering exactly what “the cloud” is (but were afraid to ask), don’t stress. It’s not nearly as mysterious as it sounds.
Here are the nuts and bolts of what it is and how it works: The cloud is a group of computers, servers and data storage devices working together as a single system that users can access remotely via the Internet.
You can use the cloud to process and store data, play games or access software for home or office work. There’s a good chance you’re already using some form of cloud computing and didn’t even know it. For example, if you have an email account with a Web-based email service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you’ve had some experience with cloud computing. Rather than running an email program on your computer, you instead log in to your Web email account remotely. The software and storage for your email account doesn’t exist on your computer — it’s in the cloud.
In theory, the cloud should allow your computer to require less memory and storage, potentially making it faster, lighter and thinner. That’s because your computer no longer has to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications or storing data. The cloud handles that for you. The only thing your computer needs to do is run the cloud’s interface software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and then the cloud does all the rest of the work.
Sounds perfect, right? Well...maybe, but keep in mind that even the puffiest white clouds can turn dark.
Remember that access to the cloud depends on a fast, reliable Internet connection; so, if you can’t connect, you can’t access your files or your software. And sometimes cloud systems go down, like the recent outage of the Amazon Web Services EC2 cloud that affected numerous high-profile, high-traffic sites and their users, such as Netflix, Foursquare, Quora and Reddit. There’s always the chance that a cloud-based “Freemium” service or software offering may get sold or suddenly go out of business, taking your account and information with it. And then there’s always the “oops” factor — like the user whose account on the cloud-based photo sharing platform Flickr was accidently deleted, permanently erasing his 4,000+ photos.
As cool as the cloud may be, it’s not perfect. And, like most complex computer systems, sooner or later Murphy’s Law will kick in (If anything can go wrong, it will). A recent survey asked more than 1,800 IT professionals how they felt about cloud computing and the majority (45%) felt that the risks outweigh the benefits while only a minority (17%) felt that the benefits outweigh the risks. In the middle, only 38% felt that the benefits and risks were balanced.
The bottom line: don’t be afraid to use the cloud, but don’t depend on it as your only system or trust it fully with your critical data, either. Always make multiple backups of your software and data on a regular schedule (at least once a week) and store your backups on separate devices in separate locations.
Clouds can be beautiful — but sometimes they can bring storms, too.
