Cloud computing is about using other people’s computers to do the work for you.
Rather than having programs running on your computer and saving information to the hard drive, a cloud service connects to your system and you access both the program and your data through a web browser such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari.
That service could be free such as Hotmail and Flickr or it could be paid for like Salesforce or Google Apps. Either way, they use a “cloud” of computers to provide the application and store their customer’s data.
Having your applications and data saved on someone else’s servers brings a number of advantages in security, cost and flexibility.
For businesses, that flexibility comes out of not having to buy complex software licences for their networks, instead they only pay for what they use. For home users it means not having to install software that often slows down machines and sometimes conflicts with other programs.
As we use the Internet more on our phones or with mobile devices like the iPad, having the advantage of not needing different software versions for each device makes it easier for us to access and use the information that used to be locked in our personal computers or office servers.
Cost too is an important factor, while many programs such as Yahoo! Mail and WordPress are free, even the paid for programs like Sassu and Basecamp offer considerable savings over their traditional competitors that require you to buy a disk and install the tool on your system.
One of the reasons for those reduced costs is the cloud services are sharing the resources between many users. That reduces the supplier’s distribution and support costs while making it easier for them to update their program when new features or security problems appear.
Security is probably the most misunderstood part of cloud computing. While cloud services do require a degree of trust in the supplier, most providers are providing a much more secure and trustworthy computer environment than most homes and businesses.
There are downsides however; you do need to have a reliable Internet connection and you do have to trust that your supplier will not only keep a secure environment but also won’t share your data with others and won’t go broke.
While some of those disadvantages with cloud computing mean that some businesses — particularly those in the medical and banking industries — have to be careful about using online services, for most homes and enterprises the cost and flexibility benefits outweigh the risks.
Over the next few years we’ll see many, if not most, computer programs move onto the cloud as reliable Internet becomes commonplace. It is the way the IT industry is heading and where we will all be doing our computing in the next few years.