Companies used to have to buy all of their own storage and hardware equipment. With the introduction of the cloud, companies only have to pay for what they use. This makes it easy for a company to scale up or down, and they don't have to worry about staying up to date with storage equipment. This creates a company that is more cost effective and efficient. Cloud computing also makes it easy for a company to back up its data; it provides a way out if a company loses all of its local data or its local servers crash. With cloud computing, automatic software updates are also an added benefit, as well as the ability to work from anywhere, anytime. Documents are easily shareable among multiple people, and this means that the environmental impact of paper use can be easily reduced.
Arguments against the cloud:
The intellectual property line for information stored in the cloud can be very blurred: it can be hard to tell what information you own, and what information is owned by the company storing it. A provider could have a strong claim on the data you create in the cloud vs. the data you upload to the cloud. Furthermore, your internet service provider/ telecom company controls your access, and companies can continue to make you pay for doing more and more things because they have control over your data. Also, if your information access is unavailable or offline, you will, in most cases, be unable to work with data stored in the cloud. Although most cloud service providers implement great security standards and certifications, using external service providers always opens the door to security risks. You provide the provider with access to important data, and because that data is stored on the server of someone else, you are giving your trust (and money) to them to protect it.
References:
Content:
http://mashable.com/2013/08/26/what-is-the-cloud/#SZ5hx7iBZkqZ
http://gizmodo.com/what-is-the-cloud-and-where-is-it-1682276210
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp
Images:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp
https://www.cloudbuckit.com/images/blog/56/cloud-computing.png
It's quite a funny term, yet not very useful for showing how it works, it's too broad! It's almost like a marketing term!
ReplyDeleteRegardless, this is a good post for demonstrating what that meaning is: servers. Servers are one of the most important backbones of the entire internet. Not just in data storage, but, at a lower level, for hosting websites. It's interesting how the term came up almost as a new product where it was just branding a new use for what the internet in basically entirely already composed of.
It's like using "Photoshopping" to refer to image editing where it can be done with any number of pieces of software -- Apple simply came up with the best name that's spread around to have meaning for so many other things related to networks.
The arguments are interesting, if a company were buying their storage from yet another company it would raise concerns of the upkeep and security all falling on that one company. This is really fascinating because today in the news there was a story about how a company that operated DNS for multiple large websites -- which allows for websites IP addresses to be located from their domain name -- was the victim of a coordinated attack and resulted in those websites to be unreachable from their domain names for a short period. They would get DNS lookup errors when they tried to go to the websites. (if people knew their IP addresses, they would still be able to access them!)
An issue like that is one of the major criticisms of the use of outside services by companies for maintaining their network architecture!