Cloud… Under this term hides a revolution in information storage. Promise of security, easy access… This digital safe could sound the end of the hard disk storage.
No more stress of hard drive crash, no more laborious synchronization of files between smartphone, tablet and office laptop… As for sharing photos with friends, it has never been so easy.
And to top it all off, there’s no need to worry about hackers or viruses: others take care of it for us. The name of this miracle solution? Cloud computing, or cloud, for those who know it well.
It’s the revolution of the moment, the one that will solve all our computer problems, we are promised. It’s impossible to miss this: it’s everywhere, used in every sauce on the Net.
“Cloud computing” means “a model of computer organization allowing access to digital resources whose storage is externalized on several servers”.
The “new generation” of storage services
Clearly, the digital files (documents, images, music, videos…) are no longer stored physically at home, on the hard disk of your computer, but on a network server (“remote”, in the computer jargon) made available by a service operator.
The files are transferred there in a reserved space. They can then be visited from anywhere in the same way, by connecting to an online account or through a small software program installed on the computer, depending on the operator chosen.
A seemingly high-tech solution, but not as recent as it seems: most of us have been using it for a long time without knowing it. Who has never sent a document by e-mail to keep it or to be able to consult it at work or at home?
Who hasn’t stored photos on Facebook or on a specialized site like Instagram, Flickr or Picasa to share them with friends? In each case, the files are stored on servers and can be visited via the Internet… No doubt, this is already cloud that does not say its name.
A study published in August 2012 by Wakefield Research revealed that in the United States (the cradle of the cloud,) 95% of people who say they have never used cloud computing are in fact using it regularly without knowing it.
Check out this article to learn more about cloud storage services.