Cloud computing is a phrase that is being bandied about quite a bit recently, leaving many people scratching their heads and wondering if the next storm is going to bring a hail of PC boards! Fear not fellow head-scratchers, the dark clouds are about to clear, as we shine some light on this interesting and controversial topic.
The techno-geeks describe cloud computing as being a large pool of server resources (RAM, CPU, hard drives) where "virtual servers" are created using these resources. In far more simple terms, cloud computing refers to the storing and accessing of data via the Internet, instead of storing it on your computer's own hard drive or on expensive network servers at the office.
You can imagine it as data floating around somewhere in the ether - or in the cloud!
Benefits of cloud computing
So, how can cloud computing benefit you and/or your company?
* As your server demands grow, you are able to add more memory, CPU power or storage space by simply clicking a button - instead of purchasing and physically installing new hardware resources, which can be costly and time-consuming. You can even allocate resources and be billed for it on an hourly basis.
* Cloud computing is built for redundancy, so if one "physical server" or "hypervisor", as we call it, fails, your server is automatically booted onto a healthy piece of hardware. Data is distributed over multiple storage arrays and replicated; which means that if a hard drive fails, you do not lose any data!
* Companies no longer have to purchase expensive servers - they simply lease the storage space and processing power they require. The cloud infrastructure is normally distributed across multiple data centres.
* When it comes to cloud storage, you have the ability to access your stored data from wherever you are, as long as you have an Internet connection (think Dropbox, Google Drive, etc).
* Mission-critical Web sites hosted on a cloud infrastructure can enjoy 100% up-time.
The future of cloud computing
Cloud computing is rapidly changing the ways that people and companies access technology. If we look at the larger companies, such as Amazon and Google, they have found that by hosting their data in the cloud (we are not talking about a small cloud here!), they have eliminated many traditional IT constraints in terms of cost, power-usage, time and of course, space.
If you have an e-mail account with Gmail or you have used a storage program like Dropbox, then you have already experienced a form of cloud computing. The software needed to run these remote programs is not on your computer, but hosted in the cloud.
Welcome to the world of cloud computing! In our next article, we will write about some practical uses for the cloud.
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