The way of storing our data has been changing over time. The first computers only had a few kilobytes to store information. Fortunately, with the passage of time, things changed and hard drives with greater capacity and floppy disks appeared. Until not long ago, CDs and DVDs were widely used to store large amounts of information. Now with the transformation to the digital world things are changing towards a new model. In this article we are going to talk about what the cloud is, where it is used and what advantages it offers us.
What is the cloud and what has been its history
The cloud can be defined as a computing model through a network that is usually the Internet. Thanks to cloud computing we have on-demand availability of computer system resources, it offers us data storage and also computing capacity, all without us having direct management of those resources.
The cloud works because our data is stored on servers on all continents and we can access it from any location as long as we have an Internet connection.
This concept has its roots in the sixties. It starts from an idea of an “intergalactic computer network” by JCR Licklider whose idea was that all users could be interconnected and could have access to programs and data from any location. The current concept that we have with cloud computing services started in 2006 with companies like Google with Google Cloud Services, Amazon AWS, Microsoft with Azure and Alibaba Cloud among many others. Currently cloud services such as IaaS, PaaS, CaaS and SaaS are some of the most used.
Advantages of using the cloud
We have already mentioned that the cloud allows us to access the Internet from any location. This has the positive aspect that it can facilitate remote work. In that aspect you can access your files and work anywhere as long as you have Internet. In addition, it allows collaborative work since you can share a file and even several people can work on the same project.
As we have already seen, working in the cloud has advantages and a part affects employees who have to get used to a new way of working. Companies, as we will see below, will also obtain their own benefits.
One of the most important advantages that the cloud offers us is its scalability . This means that if our company needs more storage space, in a relatively short space of time, by making a request to our cloud service provider we would have it. On the other hand, if we had a private cloud we would have to update the physical servers, this requires a lot of time, preparing a budget and also manpower. Also this scalability makes our company more efficient. In some cases, the company may not be doing well, so it could reduce storage and save costs. Another option may be to increase the space for a specific business and then return to the previous situation.
Also what the cloud offers is accessibility . In that aspect our data and applications will be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the year. On the other hand, if we have applications running in the cloud, the application can be distributed across multiple servers around the world. Thus, if one of the servers goes down, the other server will act as a backup.
Another important aspect is profitability and efficiency . If we had physical servers, maintaining them is a challenge and a significant economic expense. Using the cloud can be more cost-effective because we won’t need to buy hardware and we also save the electricity it takes to run those servers. In short, it saves a lot of time in the maintenance of those servers.
Last conclusions
However, although the cloud has many benefits, that does not mean that we do not worry about its security. Ransomware and other attacks are becoming more frequent. Companies must have a contingency plan for attacks and a good backup policy.
In that aspect, having our files in the cloud does not imply that our files will be totally safe. For example, our cloud services company may or may not include a backup of our files. Thus, we must be very careful when hiring the cloud and study both its prestige and the services it offers us. Finally, here are some tips so that when you store data in your cloud it doesn’t get stolen.