Are You High on the Cloud Yet?
Worth well over $120 Billion in the next year…
The Cloud Is the points between a series of network connections from data centers, sometimes referred to as the internet, that you house data including documents, records, games, music, movies, websites, business applications, social applications, etc. It may be public, private or a hybrid, and it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time and on any platform including PCs, tablets and phones.
Simply put… the Cloud refers to the space that software and services run on the world wide web rather than on your computer. Instead of housing information on your local hard drives or phone’s memory, your data is stored in massive data centers around the world. Popular games, social media sites, and business websites for example live in the Cloud. Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Netflix, Amazon Cloud Drive, Flickr, Google Drive, Microsoft Office 365, Yahoo Mail, Salesforce — are all cloud based services or storage centers. In fact, you might be surprised how much of your stuff is really on the Cloud.
This Cloud concept was rooted in the sixties when the idea of an “intergalactic computer network” was introduced by J.C.R. Licklider, who was responsible for enabling the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) in 1969. In a Cloud Computing system, there’s a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer do all f the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the Cloud handles this instead. Hardware and software demands on the user’s side decrease. The only thing a user needs is a connection to the Cloud Computing system’s interface, which can be as simple as a Web browser. Anyone who has ever lost files because of a computer crash is or has been jumping for joy about this one. Tust us!
If the Cloud is now so commonplace, why the need to discuss?
In America the Cloud is considered to have stepped out of its infancy, but in many other countries there is much growth, understanding and development to be made. Google (Google Drive) and Microsoft (SkyDrive) both rolled out their cloud based storage lockers just in April of 2012 to compete with top dog Dropbox. Dropbox was founded only a few years earlier in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. It was launched at the 2008 TechCrunch50 annual technology conference. While he was a student at MIT, Houston came up with the idea after repeatedly forgetting his flash drive. He had originally made something for himself after he discovered the existing services suffered problems but then discovered it could also be beneficial to others. It wasn’t until 2009 that they acquired the current domain of dropbox.com.
The Cloud may be everywhere, but it is obviously still very young with infinity to grow. The Cloud will provide businesses with countless possibilities to grow in future. It will also create many legal issues to consider since the Cloud is handled by servers all around the globe. It is very important to understand how the Cloud really works for your business, how your business can use it and how it can work for you.
Is the Cloud worth paying for?
For small and medium size businesses (SMB) the benefits of cloud computing often provides for services that SMBs cannot handle because of time and financial resources, deployment concerns and inability to maintain the technical infrastructure. In cloud computing small businesses can access these resources and expand or shrink the services as their business needs change and grow. The common pay-as-you-go subscription model is designed to let SMBs easily add or remove services and typically will only require payment for what is used.
So, are you high on the Cloud Yet?
If you’re not, then it’s time to take flight and don’t wait until something unexpected swallows or takes out your precious data. Get with the program, heck, develop a Cloud based program and join everyone else in the Cloud. There is much to learn and be developed.
