Definition
The term
cloud is referred as “cloud computing” most of the times in Internet. The
definition given by investopedia is “ a model for delivering information
thechnology services in which resources are retrieved from the internet through
web-based tools and applications, rather than a direct connection to a server.
Data and software packages stored in servers”.
On the
other hand, the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) defines
the Cloud more precisely as “a model of enabling ubiquitous, convenient,
on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources
(e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be
rapidly provisioned and released with a minimal management effort or service
provider interactions”.
Advantages
Regarding
the positive aspects of the Cloud, accessibility of all the personal information
from any internet-connected place stands as the main advantage of this service.
The Cloud also allows one to have back ups of any type of files and the same
version in all the devices you might want to connect to the cloud. One of the
most extended utilities of these services is the possibility of sharing your
private information with other people. This can foster the collaboration
between different people working on the same project, since all the
participants can have the last version of the files and they can also share
files that are quite difficult to send via email. In most of the cases, this
service is free of charge for a minimum space. In fact, for the companies providing
this service the marginal cost for each additional individual is very close to
zero because since there are millions of customers, they can obtain economies
of scale.
However,
flexibility is an important characteristic of the cloud because they can adapt
their offer to the customers’ needs of a higher capacity.
Disadvantages
However,
there is also a list of disadvantages that must be taken into account. In my
opinion, privacy is the most important one. Although these companies encrypts
data so that it cannot be decoded, one must make sure that the server provider
is reliable so that your information can be totally secure. This could be a
great problem if there is sensitive information of firm customers or
individuals.
There are
also technical problems that could be associated to serious dysfunctions of the
cloud. Even if they are not very frequent, this type of technical issues of
outages can cause important trouble. Despite high standards of security and
maintenance, the best cloud service providers also sun into this kind of
trouble. Lastly, these services are not available if one does not have offline,
so that they are not reliable if you have network or connectivity problems. For
business purposes, those firms replacing their IT by a cloud provider lose some
of their control on their information and processes. There might be
compatibility problems with the web based services sometimes.
Personallly….
I use
dropbox in order to have access to the files I am currently using. This allows
me to use these files from different computers without the need to taking my
USB with me and also to have access to the most recent version of the files.
Given that I teach in many different classrooms, I find that this is a great
advantage. I also use dropbox to share files with the different coauthors of my
research papers that are located around the word. In terms of connecting
devices, I use iCloud in order to connect the photos of my smartphone with my
iPad. The utility that I see in this characteristic of the cloud is that I feel
that I have these photos in a safe place in case both devices are lost or
stolen. However, I am aware that there are some privacy issues due to the fact
that more people can have access to them or the loss of the property rights.
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