Recently I was asked by my non-IT friend (imagine that!) to explain what the cloud is. I thought for a moment, and here is what came to my mind…
Imagine if all chairs in your house would miraculously appear when you want to sit down. They would just materialize under your butt, at any moment, at any table or corner where and when you need it. When you don’t need it, it disappears, and is possibly used by somebody else across the block for the same purpose. There is always enough chairs for everyone, but not enough for everyone at the same time or at the same place. When cloud malfunctions you fall. That happens very rarely, so if you have a critical dinner, or somebody who needs to be seated more often, you may want to allocate a “dedicated” chair.
The explanation was accepted. My friend now tells me that whenever she needs to sit down, she first checks if the chair is actually there…
By the same, nobody calls rent-a-car a “car cloud”, but that what it actually is! Compare owning a car to renting a car, or “zipping” a car, and many of the buzzwords about the cloud would become totally applicable.
Anyone can get access to the car
You pay for it while you use it
Give it back and you quit paying
Available on demand
Buying/leasing a car with drive off fees, registration, maintenance etc. as a comparison .
What is it? Cloud computing is essentially the outsourcing of computing resources such as data storage and software. Instead of buying servers and paying a phalanx of IT specialists to maintain them, small businesses can rent space on an off-site server and connect to their data remotely, from anywhere in the world.
What’s in it for you? Think of it this way: In the long run, renting an apartment is more expensive than buying a house, but not when you consider that houses need to be maintained. In the same way, servers require frequent upgrades and sometimes must be entirely rebuilt. By renting space in the cloud, companies off-load many of the costs associated with maintenance.
Is your data safe? Most cloud servers are protected by some of the most sophisticated security software in the world. Indeed, one of the major reasons Google reacted so swiftly to allegations of Chinese cyber-spying earlier this year related to concerns over perceptions that the company’s servers weren’t secure. Nonetheless, many CEOs remain wary of hosting sensitive data on rented computers.
So what’s the catch? For some forms of data, Canadian law requires that the material be stored on computers located inside the country. As such, some services available to small businesses south of the border aren’t available in Canada. To remedy this, U.S. cloud providers are increasingly partnering with local firms; others are pressuring Canadian politicians to amend the rules. If all goes according to plan, in less than a decade, the individual small business server may be little more than a quaint memory.
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