Anyone who likes to keep up with the latest advances in the IT world must be aware of that one term that has been the topic of discussion lately…….’CLOUD COMPUTING‘. Cloud computing, if the IT geeks are to be believed, will change our way of using and sharing applications. The concept of not having to use separate applications for everyone, but sharing them in real-time is quite interesting. Unknowingly, we have our share of cloud computing each time we log into our e-mail account.
You might be using Gmail, YAHOO! or any other e-mail service, but whenever you intend to use the service, you simply log into the e-mail account. Your machine does not have to run the program or store your account. The remote server of the particular e-mail service grants you admission into its software and you use it without leaving the comfort of your home. It is cloud computing in the real sense of the word because clouding is all about using an application or software without actually owning, installing or storing the same.
Let us talk about some features or comforts that cloud computing offers us. I have elaborated on some of them below:-
1. The best feature/advantage that cloud computing provides is definitely the drastic cost cuts it offers. In the absence of cloud computing, each worker in a firm needs to use separate applications for necessary work. The expense is, obviously taken up by the firm. Cloud computing software requires just a single installation in the main server and lets every computer connected to it, use it or rather share it. Now imagine yourself, how much does it lessen the software costs for a firm.
2. No need to be aware of the latest versions of particular software. If you are using a cloud application, the application would itself upgrade it from time to time without you having to burden yourself about the latest versions available or get a new version installed. It takes away a huge headache on your part.
3. Almost every device, be it iPhone, iPad, your home computer, every one of them provides cloud services. So you should not assume that cloud being a relatively new entrant in the club of innovative and fast IT services, it might not be available everywhere. There are host of cloud apps and devices to choose from.
4. When you are using a cloud application, you rid yourself of the tension of managing your data resources. You do not need to waste your memory space of your machine storing these resources. The cloud app will do that for you.
5. You are free to decide on where the central resources shall be kept for you to use. The location of the central pool of data resources will be decided by you. Thus it increases the availability zone of your resources.
6. You can opt for secure versions of cloud as ‘PRIVATE CLOUD’. Here,the number of people using it is limited, and any outside access is limited through the firewall. Thus the board of directors of a company is likely to use private cloud for better communication and security of private and confidential company data.
7. Cloud computing charges it’s user on pay-per-use basis. Thus you pay for the cloud services on basis of how much you use the service, or your bandwidth storage and usage.
Thus we see that clouding is an attractive option as far as working in a group is concerned. With companies as GOOGLE, ORACLE, MICROSOFT are providing cloud services already, it seems cloud is the future of group working and remote accessibility.