Plenty of clouds in 2017

Culture | January 11th, 2017

I spoke in a previous column of saving your computer files to the cloud. At the time, I told you that it’s a good idea to back up your files to the cloud to provide some security in case your computer hard drive blew up.

I did not detail exactly what cloud computing is or what it can do for you if you are a more advanced computer user or perhaps a nonprofit or library. We'll talk about "cloud computing" this week. This is different from storing files in the cloud.

The term "cloud computing" refers to a variety of Internet-based computing services. The difference between cloud-based and traditional software is that when you access the cloud, your desktop, laptop, or mobile device isn't the thing doing the actual computing. The computing happens in a large datacenter outside your organization, and you simply see the results of it on your own screen.

Most cloud computing services are accessed through a web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. You can also use certain cloud services via a dedicated mobile app or through a browser on a smartphone or tablet. Therefore, cloud services don't require users to have sophisticated computers that can run specialized software. This is a huge advantage when it comes to using some "processor-intensive" software because most of the really heavy-duty computations happen on the software owners’ own servers and not your own machine.

As your company moves more business-critical applications into the cloud, you'll likely find that you don't need to upgrade computers as regularly, and many employees can make do without higher-end computers. Companies or individuals who write their own software can use a cloud computing service such as Microsoft Azure to upload and test their new software as well as selling access to their latest products.

Cloud computing can act as a great simplifier for many organizations. If you have staff members working off-site, they can access their work just as easily at home as they can in the office. If they're using a private or secure Wi-Fi connection, there's also no need to set up a virtual private network (VPN).

Security and availability are still the main concerns that most people have about relying on cloud-based services. You've probably heard of the many high-profile news stories of security breaches in cloud-based services. Although you should certainly think about the implications of a breach in your organizational data, you should also consider that in both cloud-based and on-premises software, most security breaches are attributable to human error. You still have to practice safe computing.

Cloud computing is still a quickly changing field, and there's always the danger that a new company might go out of business or radically change its service. If you are running a small company and evaluating a cloud provider, find out what options you have for backing up and extracting your data. The best services allow you to download your data in a standard, nonproprietary format.

Next time we'll discuss Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Cloud-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone service is an example of IaaS. Did you know that Google provides you with your own phone number connected with your Gmail account?

Keep in mind that you need to have a reliable Internet Provider. I don't think that is too much of a problem in Fargo but conditions vary.

Have a great New Year!

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