Working In The Cloud - The Pro's And Con's

It seems that everyone whom has a little file server storage is getting into the Server storage and file access business - this is known to us as working 'in the cloud' for individuals, business, and enterprise markets, it is growing at a phenomenal rate.

It is that big an industry, Hewlett Packard, the biggest computer company in the world in 2011, are looking at divesting their hardware division, sell it off to another company or companies and focus purely on software and the cloud.

For many of you, this 'in the cloud' business is as confusing as tying up shoe laces on a shoe with velcro straps. There are benefits to this as well as potential pitfalls. But we will look more at a personal level, as this is the most rapidly emerging market for companies to provide cloud servicesto us, the single or household consumer.

Essentially working in the Cloud, or the cloud is a noun describing what we have had for quite some time, but there are new ways to use cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a company or entity providing or delivering a service or information from and/or to a client, business or other consumer using a shared network of resources (usually - the internet). In other words, one can store photo's, emails or music in the cloud, and access (with the right setup) these files, on other devices apart from their primary access device.

For example, you may be a registered user of the web file storage facility Dropbox, and you can, from a home computer, upload Word documents, emails, photos, videos and other data. Other devices you own like smart phones and tablets, once they have the dropbox app, can also access these same exact files. Similar cloud storage facilities can also allow you to modify a file and have that modification update on selected or other devices.

For a long time, we have been using cloud facilities and may not even realize it, every time you access an ATM machine, your using the cloud. Your bank or financial institution records are held (remotely) at the bank and your card inserted into an ATM machine provides the first step in accessing your records. a PIN number is the verification you wish to access your records, such as reading a balance or accessing and withdrawing money from a nominated account. You can repeat this process on any ATM machine, in almost any country in the world.

Another, more recent development is Amazons Kindle software. One with an Amazon Kindle account (username and password) can download for free or by purchase, a book, an ebook or other title on their home MAC or PC, an iPhone or Android mobile or Samsung Galaxy Tablet or iPad, or any other device that can use the Kindle software. Once you download a title, say one you have purchased on your Android mobile, you can synchronize and upload the same title on AMazon Kindle on your home PC.

There are as you can see so far, some exciting benefits to having cloud storage vs say external storage on a home computer.

• You are not tied down by a single or physical storage device
• You can use the front end of a cloud software to access the same files from many devices
• You can share access with others
• External storage options for individuals and companies have increased benefits, including security, cost and service benefits.
• Can be used usually irrespective of operational or computing platform (Windows vs Unix vs Linux vs Apple OS)
• The back end resources can be adjusted as required for a company providing the resource - in real time, on the fly.

As some way work out before reading this section, there are also some downsides to having cloud storage vs say external storage on a home computer. Some are down right scary when you realize too, and for one or two of the items listed below, they have already happened!

• Lose access to a cloud account (Dropbox, Google Mail, Yahoo, iCloud, etc) due to web hacking activity. In the Australian Magazine PCAuthority Sep 2011 edition - there is one article about a man who lost his Google account due to web fraud; all his emails, photos, documents were inaccessable, as he was unable to re-access his account.
• Web fraud, someone may hack into your cloud based accounts and delete or add files.
• Loss of internet or network access
• Corruption of front end access, making it difficult to retrieve or update data stored in the cloud.
• Location of data may be on a PC internal or externally connected hard drive, yet no faculty to access over the internet or network.
• No additional backup non cloud related (hard drives, phones, USB drives, etc)

With cloud computing, some services have been with us a long, long time (such as ATM machine facility) and some are emerging new technologies (Kindle software, Google mail, Dropbox, etc) and there will be new services and products that we have not seen yet.

The decision comes down to ease of access, ease of use, cost, and risk versus reward in helping making a choice in using this new, exciting and emerging technology.