It’s everywhere. Seriously look around you… every bloody “smart” device around us flaunts it. If you think about it, it has really become a pervasive part of our life these days.
Oh and if the title of the post wasn’t a hint enough then yes, I am talking about Cloud Computing. I’m sure everybody knows what Cloud Computing is but for the sake of those who do not, let’s try to put it simply.
Dropbox is a popular cloud based application
Simply put, the Cloud is the internet. When people say “I’m just gonna put this file on the cloud.”, he means, instead of just keeping the file on his local hard drive, he is going to upload a file from his computer into the internet, most likely through some free cloud based service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. What do they get out of it? Well, imagine this… you are working hard on some project at college. Suddenly you realize you’ve forgotten your pen drive at home! You curse yourself momentarily before remembering that you have the Cloud on your side! Using the shitty college Wi-Fi you quickly access your Dropbox account and upload the relevant files there. When you return home you find that the files are ready and waiting on your computer! Magic? Nah. That was just one of the least innovative applications of Cloud Computing.
Google Drive is Google’s offering – a competitor to Dropbox
Well, that’s great then! We won’t need to carry around and bulky storage devices around anymore! As long as there’s an internet connection, we’re good to go! Yep absolutely correct. As long as there’s an internet connection. If you are, due to some unfortunate predicament, unable to access the internet, you are out of luck – there’s no way to get your files. And that is pretty much the only downside.
On the upside you get 24/7 access to your files from any device that can access the internet, virtually unlimited storage space, powerful collaborative tools, cloud processing and automatic update of a file on all devices once it has been modified on one device.
My Take:
So what’s my take you ask? Well in my opinion cloud computing is here to stay for the next few years at least. Some may call it a fad but at the moment it fits just the gap in storage media that people have been missing. Sure there are some privacy concerns over the data on the cloud but I’m sure some well worded legal documents will fix the problem right up. After that it’s merely a matter of waiting for our internet infrastructure to be upgraded so that it can withstand the strain of millions of people consuming content from the cloud. Once this last kink is ironed out, we’re all set to float about amongst the clouds.
Image Credits: Dropbox, carlosjj, ldinami7e, Apple Inc.
TatkaTech 