How is Cloud Computing Changing the Computer World?

One key role of the internet is to enable the sharing of content among people across the world. File sharing has become faster and more accessible in recent years thanks to an important development in computer technology – cloud computing. Cloud computing involves the use of a grid of computers to store virtual resources. These computers work in a single system from a remote location, holding information for a vast number of computers. The effect of cloud computing is that the need for hardware and disk space to store files is lessened greatly. Applications can be run directly from the web just as quickly as they would run from a hard drive. For the average computer user, cloud computing is appealing in that it allows for increased data storage space and increased accessibility to files being shared by multiple users.

 

The use of cloud technology has become highly prevalent in the current online environment and it is only going to become more prevalent in the future. Cloud computing is used by services like Google Docs to allow for files to be stored in a private, communal location. It is also being used by some of today’s most popular social media sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) to allow for the mass storage of data. Cloud computing is now essential to the survival of these sites, as the amount of data on these sites is only going to increase. Still, users will be able to retrieve information just as quickly due to the efficiency of cloud services.

 

The transition toward cloud-based services is occurring very quietly and has been rather unnoticed by most computer users. Many of the websites that people spend the most time on are using cloud services, and soon enough, the offline programs that people use will become cloud-based as well. Microsoft Office now offers an online version of its program, in which users can access their documents anywhere, eliminating the inconvenience of emailing a copy of a document to oneself in order to work on it elsewhere. There are certain disadvantages to this form of data storage that users must recognize before making the switch from disk to cloud. One is that if you lose internet service, you lose all your data stored via cloud as well. Another major concern is security; with so much data being stored in a remote location, the threat of data theft is somewhat worrying. If hackers are able to circumvent the security system of a cloud storage service, there is much that could go wrong.

 

In the near future, public cloud services are expected to become the dominant means of data storage for internet users. According to The Economic Times, 800 billion gigabytes of data will be stored in public cloud services by 2015. The use of hardware for data storage is becoming a thing of the past as the internet is becoming increasingly central to our overall computer experience. Cloud computing seems to be the next logical development in the modern age of mobility.