One of the hottest topics in the computer world today is "The Cloud". This mysterious meteorological phenomenon is really actually a really simple concept. In old fashioned (i.e. 2004 era) network diagrams large portions of the internet that weren't relevant to the diagram were often shown as a fuzzy, cloud enclosed, area.
- Why it's called the cloud.
As the ability to upload and download large files quickly became more prevalent services started to pop up taking advantage of that fact. Flickr, for example, allows people to store their pictures on a remote company's servers which allows friends and relatives to view the pictures without being forced to download them in dozens of individual emails. This means that they can download the ones they want, ignore the ones they don't want, and go back and show others whenever and wherever.
The truth is that cloud based services existed long before the term existed. A cloud based service is simply a service that operates on a remote internet connected server that can be accessed from anywhere on the internet. These services have proliferated in recent years. The most common cloud based services are file, photo, and video storage services.
Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug, and 500px (pronounced as 500 pixels) are all photo storage and sharing sites. Though each addresses a specific niche in the photo sharing market, at heart they all accomplish the same thing. To share pictures with others. Picasa is aimed at the average family snapshot taker who wants to upload their pictures to share (Picasa is owned by Google). Flickr is similar, but has slightly more elegant features (at the time of this writing), so it tends to draw more serious amateurs (Flickr is owned by Yahoo!). Smugmug is aimed at serious amateurs and professionals who want to sell their work. And 500px tends to be populated by professionals and very serious amateurs that want to showcase their work. It is less designed to share an entire portfolio and more aimed at sharing your best work.
Vimeo and YouTube are two cloud based video sharing sites. YouTube(owned by Google) hosts endless volumes of videos from officially released music videos to the worlds largest collection of men being hit in the privates by assorted objects. While YouTube is the McDonalds of video sharing, Vimeo is the Olive Garden. Vimeo hosts, on average, more serious film works and content, and far fewer painful (albeit funny) testicular accidents.
Then there are the sites that cater towards simple file storage like Box.com, Dropbox, and OneDrive. Blogging sites such as the one on which this blog is hosted WordPress, and ones like Blogger. In fact in a way, though it isn't often referred to as such, even Facebook is a cloud based service. But it doesn't stop there. Beyond just storing files many other services have popped up that actually maintain data and/or process information. There are accounting services such as Wave, Xero, and Quickbooks Online. Also there is customer relations software (WorkFlow Max, Salesforce), Help desk services such as ZenDesk, survey creation and processing like SurveyMonkey, and mailing list software like MailChimp.
There are also entire suites designed to supplement or even replace Microsoft Office and the likes. Google Docs, Zoho, and Office 365 are just a few.
OK, so that's a lot of services, but why? There are a lot of benefits to using a cloud based service, and a few drawbacks. The first benefit is access. I own a small business. I use a cloud based accounting service so now I can go home in the evening and do my accounting work from there. I often have employees here when I am not and they need to access the accounting system as well. In the days when I had QuickBooks installed on my computer I had to take my laptop home if I wanted to work on accounting there. And then it was not available to employees. Now I don't even have to take the laptop home, I can just use my wife's computer to access my accounting while I'm at home and nobody has a problem accessing it at any time. In fact my business uses cloud based order tracking, cloud based file storage, cloud based word processing, and even a cloud based time clock. Another accessibility advantage is that many cloud based services offer phone and tablet apps allowing for easy mobile use.
The second advantage is backups. Everybody should back up their data. Whether a business or an individual, losing all of your files can be devastating. A lifetime of digital photos lost. Tax documents. Employee Records. Customer Artwork. All of this stuff is irreplaceable. But the truth is many people do not back up their documents. And even if they do they do it on an external hard drive. In the event of a fire an external hard drive in the same room as your computer just means two lumps of melted plastic instead of one. A good strategy is to have a copy of your data locally, and another stored elsewhere. But really, nobody does that. Cloud based services serve as a place to store your remote data. Not only that but most cloud services are extremely dedicated to creating redundant backups of their customer data. Nothing puts a cloud based service out of business faster than losing a customer's data. As a side note you should still keep a local copy of your data. Never depend on someone else when it comes to backups.
The third advantage is upfront cost. While over time buying software comes out slightly cheaper (especially if you don't update it every year), using a cloud based service usually charges on a monthly basis, and depending on the service a basic account is often free or inexpensive. So instead of buying a copy of Sage for $300 you could start out with web based accounting for $13 a month.
So now that you're sold, I'll talk about the negatives. The first is security. You will be uploading all of your stuff, including sensitive stuff, to a place where anyone on the internet could potentially access it. Even though they encrypt it for your safety, that is only as good as your password. If you choose a weak password or use the same password on a lot of sites you risk exposing all of your data. And even if you are very careful, data breaches by others could put you at risk. But if you are careful the risk is small. There are some things you can do to make the risk minuscule, but that is a topic for another day.
Availability is the second problem. If your internet connection goes down you literally cannot work on any of these services. If you keep your customer invoices on an online accounting system and the internet is down you can't even tell your customer how much they owe you. Also, while the vast majority of the cloud based services, especially the well known ones, are backed by major companies with lots of money, a company that shuts its doors overnight might just be cutting off access to your files. Another good reason to keep local backups. Always research a company to whom you are going to entrust data.
The final concern is the portability of data. What good is having all of your accounting data in a wonderful accounting system when you can't get it out. If you want to move to another system you should be able to easily extract all of your data in a format that is easily usable. In the case of an accounting system, for example, you would want data exported as a spreadsheet or database file. Just being able to print all of the information doesn't help you get it all into a new system.
So there you have it. The cloud is neither mysterious nor particularly complicated. Just another name for something you probably already use.
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