Week 2 Blog Entry - What is the Cloud

What is the Cloud?

The easy explanation is the cloud is where you access programs or data over the internet instead of storing everything on your hard drive. Sometimes, you will be all in the cloud and others you might partially be in the cloud. For example, you use Microsoft Office products that have been downloaded to your desktop or laptop, but you store your documents in One Drive or Google Drive. The drives are utilizing the cloud. If you exclusively use Microsoft 365 online and don’t download the application, you are utilizing the cloud for those.

You may not realize how much you use the cloud. Anytime you access your email on the web, if you use Apple iCloud, and if you use any of the Google products (Drive, Photos, email, Google Apps, etc.), you are using Cloud technology. Even Facebook and Instagram could be considered cloud services because of the way they handle your photos. With the use of Carbonite to back up my desktop for several years, I’ve been using the cloud for backups.

Next week, we’ll talk about the differences with businesses using the cloud.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp