Contrary to how it might sound, cloud computing has nothing to do with being able to use your laptop on an airliner. Cloud computing is the ability to employ a number of computers, hardware, software, and servers to serve your computing needs remotely without actually owning or running the software and hardware.
If you’ve ever used BitTorrent, you have used a cloud computing service. You seek a file, and thousand of other computers around the world have copies of this file. Your BitTorrent client then downloads bits of the file from multiple computers simultaneously while also uploading bits to other people who are seeking the same file. The computers that you are connected to are your cloud.
The strength of cloud computing is that it is instantly scalable; in other words, more computers can be added to or removed from the cloud at any time, without impacting the operation of the cloud. And, because of this, there are virtually unlimited processing and storage capabilities to any user that wants to use cloud computing.
Because of the popularity and multitude of options that cloud computing services are offering users, cloud computing has started to be called utility computing, in the same sense that water or electricity is a metered utility. This means that while there are numerous free cloud computing services, like Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail, there are also a number of options that users can purchase on-demand to meet their specific needs.
You may be wondering what you can do with unlimited storage and processing power. Consider YouTube. YouTube would not function without cloud computing. The simultaneous streaming and uploading of millions of files by millions of users without minimal glitches takes massive, well-supported resources. Yet, YouTube began as a very small company. Facebook also uses cloud computing technology; it too started as a small company – by a 24 year old student in his dorm room on a notebook. In addition, Twitter uses cloud computing to server millions of users at once, supporting their microblogging and communication, and has been so effective that it has been used to engage the world wide community in variety of discussions about current events, such as Iranians’ use of Twitter to protest the elections in their country.
Cloud computing doesn’t stop at e-mail applications and social networking. Sites like Hulu, Netflix and Epix offer instant streaming of movie content to personal computers and HD televisions on-demand, without users needing to purchase additional software or hardware. Cloud computing has also revolutionized these businsses’ customer relationship management strategies alongside these video streaming options. These companies are analyzing the viewing trends of their users; the trends are instantly available to these companies, allowing them to target ads, target ad revenue according to popularity on a minute by minute basis, and recommend similar content to users based on their viewing habits. In addition, when looking at companies such as Livestream, for example, we discover that the company is completely server-less. It offers video streaming, yet does not own a single server. It rents cloud computing capabilities as a utility.
Like any technology in its infancy, it remains to be seen what the long-term impact of cloud computing will be. The options it offers individuals and businesses are seemingly limitless. It is up to users to determine how services offered and supported by cloud computing can help them accomplish their goals.
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