You may have heard people using terms like the cloud, cloud computing, or cloud storage. But what exactly is the cloud?
Simply put, the cloud is the Internet—more specifically, it's all of the things you can access remotely over the Internet. When something is in the cloud, it means it's stored on Internet servers instead of your computer's hard drive.
Why use the cloud?
Some of the main reasons to use the cloud are convenience and reliability. For example, if you've ever used a web-based email service, such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, you've already used the cloud. All of the emails in a web-based service are stored on servers rather than on your computer's hard drive. This means you can access your email from any computer with an Internet connection. It also means you'll be able to recover your emails if something happens to your computer.
Let's look at some of the most common reasons to use the cloud.
- File storage: You can store all types of information in the cloud, including files and email. This means you can access these things from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, not just your home computer. Dropbox and Google Drive are some of the most popular cloud-based storage services.
- File sharing: The cloud makes it easy to share files with several people at the same time. For example, you could upload several photos to a cloud-based photo service like Flickr or iCloud Photos, then quickly share them with friends and family.
- Backing up data: You can also use the cloud to protect your files. There are apps such as Carbonite that automatically back up your data to the cloud. This way, if your computer ever is lost, stolen, or damaged, you'll still be able to recover these files from the cloud.
