What is Cloud Computing?
In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and
programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive. The cloud is
just a metaphor for the Internet.
What cloud computing is not about
is your hard drive. When you store data on or run programs from the hard drive,
that's called local storage
and computing. Everything you need is physically close to you, which means
accessing your data is fast and easy, for that one computer, or others on the
local network. Working off your hard drive is how the computer industry
functioned for decades; some would argue it's still superior to cloud
computing, for reasons I'll explain shortly.
The cloud is also not about
having a dedicated network attached storage (NAS) hardware or server in
residence. Storing data on a home or office network does not count as utilizing
the cloud. (However, some NAS will let you remotely access things over the
Internet, and there's at least one NAS named "My
Cloud," just to keep things confusing.)
For it to be considered "cloud
computing," you need to access your data or your programs over the
Internet, or at the very least, have that data synchronized with other
information over the Web. In a big business, you may know all there is to know
about what's on the other side of the connection; as an individual user, you
may never have any idea what kind of massive data-processing is happening on
the other end. The end result is the same: with an online connection, cloud
computing can be done anywhere, anytime.
Consumer vs. Business
Let's be clear here. We're talking about cloud
computing as it impacts individual consumers—those of us who sit back at home
or in small-to-medium offices and use the Internet on a regular basis.
There is an entirely different
"cloud" when it comes to business. Some businesses choose to
implement Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where the business subscribes to an
application it accesses over the Internet. (Think Salesforce.com.) There's also
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), where a business can create its own custom
applications for use by all in the company. And don't forget the mighty
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), where players like Amazon, Microsoft,
Google, and Rackspace provide a backbone that can be "rented out" by
other companies. (For example, Netflix provides services to you because it's a customer of the cloud-services at Amazon.)
No comments:
Post a Comment