You are not alone if you have been wondering what all this hype about the “cloud” is all about. What is “the cloud” and what makes it so great? Essentially, “the cloud” is a term which refers to the Internet. Therefore, “cloud computing” refers to the offloading of computing tasks to a solution based on the Internet. This approach has several key advantages over desktop computing: Portability, cross platform compatibility, ease of maintenance, and data security. While these are surely not the only things that set cloud computing apart from traditional computing, these are the most important.
In an age of smart phones, tablets, and netbooks, the Internet is a crucial part of modern life. Commerce, communication, socialization, and organization, all integral components of our society, now take place on the Internet. In order for us to be able to effectively manage all of the tools available at out disposal, portability is a must. Windows Mobile was one of the first available platforms to offer portable access to business tools such as email, documents, spreadsheets, and contacts. The problem with Windows mobile was the fact that in order to utilize all of these features, one had to have access to Windows server, so the platform failed to gain much traction in the consumer market. Windows Mobile did however pave the way for the smart phone platforms we now take for granted. Today, with smart phones becoming ubiquitous, developer are publishing applications that are planted firmly in “the cloud.” Without an Internet back-end, most smart phone applications would not exist. When you run an app such as Shazam, all of the processing is done by servers on the Internet. Cloud computing allows us to run powerful software on hardware that would otherwise be incapable. Thanks to the Internet, we no longer have to sit down at a computer to use a good piece of software.
Where portability is an important feature for the consumer, cross platform compatibility is a huge bonus for the developer. In a traditional computing environment, if a developer wanted to write a program to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, he would have to create a separate code base for each one. Basically, the developer would have to rewrite the application for each operating system. On a cloud based environment, a developer can create a web application which will run on every platform. In a world where an astounding number of different pieces of hardware exist, coding only one application means that the developer can focus on improving features, instead of debugging each variant of the application. This creates a win-win scenario for the developer and the user.
Anyone who has worked in an IT field can attest to the pains of having to update applications in a network environment. The rest of us who haven’t worked in IT can also attest to the annoyances of software updates and the inconveniences they create. Since cloud based applications require no locally installed software, neither users nor administrators need update or maintain the applications they use. Security patches, functional updates and all other types of patches are done solely on the server side, with no user intervention required. We can all relax and use the software instead of screwing with it.
While many may argue with this last statement, it needs to be mentioned none-the-less. Cloud based applications offer users better data security than desktop applications, provided that users remember to be vigilant when it comes to online safety. In a desktop environment, theft of the physical device storing the data would result in a total loss of said data, as well a breach of personal privacy. Many mainstream cloud applications offer encryption, so the user’s connection to the server cannot be monitored, thus mitigating the risk of data theft. Another weak point of desktop computing is lack of automated backups from the begining. Far to many users do not make regular backups of their data, and failure to backup data from an application will lead to loss of data in the event of system failure. Cloud computing has the inherent advantage of being distributed; data is stored across many servers and backed up automatically. For this reason, cloud applications should be chosen if data preservation or user privacy are critical.
By now, you should have a grasp of the basics of cloud computing and what benefits it has to offer. Whether you choose to use cloud applications is entirely up to you. As the Internet becomes increasingly more a part of our daily lives, so will cloud computing. Some day you may not be able to purchase Microsoft Word, Photoshop, or even Windows in stores. Instead, all your software would be accessed with a browser. That day is much closer than most would believe. Whatever the future may hold for computing, the Internet will play an integral role.
If a future in the cloud sounds appealing to you, the wait will be over soon, as Google Chrome OS is currently at the pilot-program stage. If you want to get started now, try Google Docs, Dropbox, or Onlive (an online gaming platform).
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