Cloud Services - What are they?
Cloud services, we’ve all heard of them, and most of us have actually worked with one in some fashion, but what are they?
Now I know that hearing cloud storage or “The Cloud” brings up images of some nebulous glowing thing, somewhere on the Internet that somehow is able to just keep your data there ofr you, something that’s just “there”… The truth is, cloud storage is nothing more than someone else’s computer, someone else’s hard drive that you’re connecting too and storing your data and information on their device.
Now I know that’s a bit of an over-simplifications, but at it’s core, that’s really all that cloud storage is.
The thing to note here though, yes, this is an over simplification of what Cloud Storage is, but at the same time, there are so many benefits to it that it far outweighs the cost or risks of using such a service!
So, where did cloud storage come from? Businesses for years have been storing data. They stored it on paper records, photographs, faxes, digital files, stored on computers, disks, tape and more. For a while this was more than sufficient for most uses, but people are people and we’re nothing if not digital hoarders, and the needs to storage capacity grew and grew and companies were finding out, quickly I might add, that unlimited storage got quite expensive!
You first need to purchase the storage. Then you need to make sure the storage won’t fail, so you had to build in redundancies to protect the storage. Next you hade to backup all that daily growing storage in CASE something happened to it. Then there was the risk that something happened to your building, like a fire, flood or other natural disaster. The list of these things called “Risk” goes on and on, and business, like living organisms, want to continue to live and thrive. Something had to evolve here to give businesses an option for maintaining their storage and data in a cost effective manner.
In 2006, Amazon created their S3 product (the S3 stands for Simple Storage Service) and cloud storage was born! It offered scalable, high-speed, and affordable data storage for developers and businesses. Suddenly businesses that had invested thousands (or more) in systems in multiple geographic locations, or renting Data Center Space and replicating equipment multiple times, all things that were extremely expensive, weren’t quite needed any more. A lot of this could be re-created using the new Amazon service that provided the same level of protection as building your own in-house solution, but at the fraction of the cost!
This evolution in storage (and other capacity) was a welcome site to businesses that had been struggling to replicate their data and information to help protect themselves and in a more cost effective manor. But what does this have to do with us users and our data, well, I’m getting to that!
Throughout 2006 and 2007, Amazon’s S3 services continued to change the landscape for businesses and their data storage needs, the consumer still had a similar problem. I’d even argue, for the consumer, in many ways it’s actually worse than that.
One of the biggest problems for the home user or average consumer is that they don’t take the task of backing up their data very seriously, or at the very least, they don’t pay the proper attention to backing up their data as they should! They treat their computer like and appliance, it just runs, it’ll always be there and they don’t need to worry about it. The problem with that is, computers are like any other mechanical device. They WILL eventually fail, data will be lost and components will need to be replaced. Other companies saw this need and in addition, the ability or desire to use the same contents on multiple different computers or types of devices, and in September of 2008 Dropbox was launched!
Dropbox. Such a simple name and so unknown previously… But talk to anyone about cloud storage today and that is almost always the first words out of their mouth! Dropbox launched giving users a simple, seamless, and easy way to not only store their files “in the cloud”, but backup their data safely and share it with other family and friends on an in-demand basis!
This was truly the start of consumer level cloud storage. A way of not only saving their data so it wasn’t on their local machine, but also backed up somewhere else so that if they lost their device, had it stolen, or had a hardware or other failure, their data was somewhere, safe and protected and able to be retrieved!
Something that’s so simple became so profound and has continued to be as important if not more important today!
Today we see many different services, call clamoring for your attention, all offering the ability to backup your date, share it with who you want it shared with, all with simple interfaces that work across multiple different devices. From Microsoft OneDrive, to Apple iCloud, to GoogleDrive and Dropbox, there are dozens of options out there, you simply need to decide on which one is the best for you, sign up, make sure you have adequate storage and move your data there!
It’s as simple as a drag and drop and Poof! Your data is protected! You no longer have an excuse not to protect your data.
Connecting to a cloud storage service today is as easy as signing up for an email account and just about as fast. Yes, there’s a monthly cost, but that price is relatively small when you consider either loosing all your data entirely or the cost of data recovery should your computer or drive crash, even if the data is recoverable. On average, you’re talking about in the thousands for data recovery from a device compared to a few bucks a month to protect everything should the worse happen!
You have health insurance, insurance on your car, home or apartment, why wouldn’t you protect your data, something that’s completely irreplaceable should it be lost? I for one am more than happy to spend those few extra dollars for that added peace of mind!
One last point to make though, some of you may already have cloud storage available to you and aren’t even using it. The best example is if you use a Microsoft 365 account, you may already have as much as 1TB of cloud storage space you’re already paying for! 1TB can store all the data for most people I know and then some!
Don’t be that person yelling “WHY” at their computer when it’s sitting there as a smoldering husk after the worst has happened, Cloud Storage is here today, it’s fast, cost efficient, secure, safe and more. Yes it’s simply data stored on someone else’s computer, but it’s stored using far more protection and redundancy that you could ever manage to have in your own home!
