cloud
_"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network (typically the Internet)"
Which is all rather anodyne. For you and me - in our personal lives - the concept is much simpler: We make use of some service with a bit of technology - computer, smart phone, iPad - and the data we create in that service is stored 'somewhere else'. We don't care where, we just trust someone to store it and keep it safe, We don't worry about backing it up - it's someone else's problem. It's always available, in the way we expect it to be, from as many devices as we can consume it on. It's - undoubtedly - the way the world will work in the future. The concept broadly fails without pervasive connectivity - if you thought the internet connection on your smartphone was less important than being able to make a phone-call, think again. It's absolutely critical. Telephones - as in PSTN or GSM mobile - are dead devices in the not too distant future. But you won't be able to exist without a device in your pocket that has internet connectivity - which you can use for voice and video comms if you need to, but it's a tiny fraction of what you'll use it for.
The corporate world is more than aware of the possibilities - but necessarily wary about the implications. Cloud Services - and there are more variants than you might imagine - are relatively new: There are contractual issues, security issues, performance concerns and general fear of the unknown. The average man on the street is likely already using them - without even acknowledging it in many respects. Apple's iCloud has made the expression everyday - but I suspect many don't really think about the implications.
My life is pretty much dependent on one cloud service or other - which is radically different from even a few years ago: I ran everything with computers of some sort - but generally the data behind what I was doing was in one place, in my house somewhere. Not so many years before that, it was on a particular hard-drive in a particular machine. Nowadays, it's 'out there' - somewhere I can share it across multiple devices, collaborate on it with other people, access it from any web browser in many cases. If it's important data, I maintain a local copy that I have control of - but the copy that really matters is the one in the ether.
I started comparing my use with a colleague recently - a conversation that started with some mutual recommendations and ended up a competition to see who's most cloudy... So I thought I'd stick the list of all the stuff I came up with here, lest it prompt someone to think about doing something different. And, if not - or, indeed, if you're bored stiff already - well, move along please. Nothing to see.
Which is all rather anodyne. For you and me - in our personal lives - the concept is much simpler: We make use of some service with a bit of technology - computer, smart phone, iPad - and the data we create in that service is stored 'somewhere else'. We don't care where, we just trust someone to store it and keep it safe, We don't worry about backing it up - it's someone else's problem. It's always available, in the way we expect it to be, from as many devices as we can consume it on. It's - undoubtedly - the way the world will work in the future. The concept broadly fails without pervasive connectivity - if you thought the internet connection on your smartphone was less important than being able to make a phone-call, think again. It's absolutely critical. Telephones - as in PSTN or GSM mobile - are dead devices in the not too distant future. But you won't be able to exist without a device in your pocket that has internet connectivity - which you can use for voice and video comms if you need to, but it's a tiny fraction of what you'll use it for.
The corporate world is more than aware of the possibilities - but necessarily wary about the implications. Cloud Services - and there are more variants than you might imagine - are relatively new: There are contractual issues, security issues, performance concerns and general fear of the unknown. The average man on the street is likely already using them - without even acknowledging it in many respects. Apple's iCloud has made the expression everyday - but I suspect many don't really think about the implications.
My life is pretty much dependent on one cloud service or other - which is radically different from even a few years ago: I ran everything with computers of some sort - but generally the data behind what I was doing was in one place, in my house somewhere. Not so many years before that, it was on a particular hard-drive in a particular machine. Nowadays, it's 'out there' - somewhere I can share it across multiple devices, collaborate on it with other people, access it from any web browser in many cases. If it's important data, I maintain a local copy that I have control of - but the copy that really matters is the one in the ether.
I started comparing my use with a colleague recently - a conversation that started with some mutual recommendations and ended up a competition to see who's most cloudy... So I thought I'd stick the list of all the stuff I came up with here, lest it prompt someone to think about doing something different. And, if not - or, indeed, if you're bored stiff already - well, move along please. Nothing to see.