Cloud Computing – Why You Should Care

The computer industry is one that confuses most people, even those within it. The buzzword today is “Cloud Computing”. But what is it? More importantly, why do I care, and why should you care?

I am sure that most people will say – “The PC that I bought at my local shop made no mention of the cloud; it must be an app on service”.

Not so!

Most people are already users of the cloud. Do you have a Yahoo, Gmail, or MSN email address? If yes then you are a cloud user. Your data is not on your local computer, it is stored potentially 1000’s of miles away.

The same goes for the social media sites, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and the other eight gazillion places operating in the same way. Your comments, pictures, ideas, are not living inside that box on the floor beside your monitor; they are on a computer far, far away.

To be honest, the Cloud seemed scary when I first heard about it. Who would trust information to be stored in a place that is hard to define? A place that you could not reach out and touch?

But, think about it for a moment. Your local hard drive is the same in a way. Sure, you can take a screwdriver and unhook it. You can hold it in your hands, but can you really touch the data? Can you hold that picture of your child in your hands? The answer is a resounding NO!

You can hold the physical device, but so what? What happens if that physical device gets damaged? The sensible answer would be I would reload my data from my back up system. It sounds great, but, how many of you actually back up your data?

The cloud makes good sense. Your data is backed up, it is safe. Sure, if you lose your Internet connection it will be inaccessible until service is restored. I class that as a minor irritant that I can live with, and when it happens I can always continue to create at the local level.

The cloud as a data repository makes great sense to me.It unfetters me from my computer, no matter which part of the world I am in, and I can access the information.

Can the cloud do more? Yes it can 😉

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