The CW Corner – The Cloud Defined
So many services try to persuade us to access, link to, or download from “The Cloud.”
What is “The Cloud” anyway? A magical portal in the sky wherein lies knowledge and wisdom? Information stored in the atmosphere’s ionized particles? Aliens storing our information in flying saucers accessed by our Smartphone’s?
“The Cloud” simply refers to computer networks connected to the Internet. We’ve renamed something that’s been around for a while now.
When you’re using any device – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, smartphone, iPad, table, or whatever – that is connected to the Internet, you’re accessing a massive network of computers. This is often called accessing “The Cloud.” There really are no “clouds” involved at all. All of the servers and machines that supply all of the information we access all reside in various physical machines in many places all over the planet.
While all of what’s necessary to make the Internet happen is complex, it’s not magic. Dealing with local companies – a local “cloud” – really helps local economies. By lumping everything Internet into “the cloud” it’s easy to be helping distant economies instead of your own.
Local web companies can set people up in a LOCAL “cloud” where they can store the files needed to operate their websites to do business.
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