THE CLOUD (n.): Taking technology to new heights

What Is It?

The cloud is a network of servers. These servers are housed in warehouses around the world (also known as data farms) and have specific purposes—some are for storing data, and others are for running applications.

What Does It Do?

The cloud allows us to store data and to run programs and applications over the Internet rather than on our computer hard drives. Anytime we store information without using our own storage (like posting a photo on Flickr or uploading a file to OneDrive) or use a web-based service (like watching a movie on Netflix, listening to music on Spotify or editing a document on Microsoft 365) we are using the cloud.

Why Use It?

The cloud is convenient. With it, we can access our information anytime, anywhere—on all your devices—all we need is an Internet connection. And because we are essentially using someone else’s storage space, we are saving our own gigabytes. That means we are less likely to run out of space on our own devices as quickly and might not need to purchase more storage or delete old data as frequently.

Cloud computing is also the ultimate backup plan. Lost phones and crashed laptops no longer mean all is lost if most of our information is being kept in the cloud. Hopefully soon we will be able to kiss goodbye the days of old-school storage methods, such as stacking mountains of CD-ROMs in our home offices or filling our desk drawers with USB flash drives.

Clouded by Controversy

Pop culture has certainly played a role in fueling the fears and controversy surrounding the cloud. With hackers breaking into celebrities’ iCloud accounts to leak personal photos and network breaches of high-profile retailers compromising millions of customer credit cards, cloud computing has weathered some serious media storms.

Adding to the real-life drama are movies and television shows that depict the cloud as a vague or ominous abyss that absorbs our personal information and puts our identities and reputations at risk. And while that might make for good television, it’s just not the day-to-day reality.

Privacy Protection

Privacy is likely the most prevalent concern about cloud computing. As cloud users, we want to know that our information is safe. We are storing our information on someone else’s server, so by using cloud services and moving information back and forth over the Internet, we are giving some control of our data to our cloud service providers.

The best way we can protect ourselves when using this technology is to ensure that we never put anything on a cloud-based program or application we wouldn’t want others to see, such as personal information or compromising photos or videos. In other words, just use common sense. It’s also very important to read the fine print. Cloud service providers post privacy and ownership policies that explain what policies, procedures or security measures they have in place to protect user data. t8n

Did You Know? The general concept of cloud computing was first introduced in the 1950s; organizations would house one large mainframe computer and allow multiple users to access it at once through dumb terminals (terminals with no internal processing capabilities of their own).

Fun Fact
According to the latest study by Synergy Research Group, Amazon Web Services holds 28% of the market share in cloud infrastructure services, which makes its cloud the biggest. Microsoft is behind Amazon with 10% of the market share, and IBM is in third place with 7%.