What is cloud technology?

The term "cloud technology" is now on everyone's lips. Active discussion of possible nuances of work with such technologies is conducted both at forums of large Internet companies, and in the environment of users-beginners. And to discuss, really, is that.

Every day in search engines, computer owners are increasingly asking "what is cloud technology". This is not surprising, because more and more users will learn about this innovation. A vivid example is antivirus programs. New versions of Norton Internet Security, Kaspersky and many others in the settings offer to activate the option of protection from the cloud. Since curiosity is peculiar to human nature itself, it is quite logical that people begin to be interested in what cloud technologies are.

Alas, something revolutionary should not be expected. In part, these technologies have long existed on the Web, they simply lacked a precise and capacious definition, systematization and understanding of potential opportunities. Cloud technology is a way of processing digital data outside the environment of the initiating computer. Since many people are familiar with the term due to antivirus applications, let's consider the work of "clouds" using the example of this group of programs.

Let's imagine that an antivirus application encounters a suspicious code that is not described in the virus databases. If the user does not know what cloud technologies are and did not allow their use (tick in the settings), then the antivirus will try to localize the suspicious file until the bases are updated. Everything is completely different if cloud technologies are activated. In this case, information about strange code is automatically transferred to the server of the developer of the anti-virus program, where it is promptly checked by experts for potential danger. In case of confirmation of the threat, all computers connected to this resource are sent an instruction on ways to neutralize the danger. As a result, unprecedented speed of response to the emergence of new viruses. What is cloud technology in this example? The answer lies in executing the processing of suspicious code on the capabilities of the developer's servers, outside the computers of ordinary users. This is the key feature.

Cloud technologies give a second life to low-power computing devices. Suppose that we have a calculator that has access to the Internet and is connected to a specialized "cloud" consisting of clusters of high-performance computers. We can perform elementary operations ourselves, but what if we need complex calculations? In this case, the calculator sends the task data to the cloud service, and in return receives a ready-made solution. For the user, the actions that occurred between the instruction set and the response were not noticed. The main thing is the result, and it was achieved. Of course, the calculator is an extreme, but, on the other hand, it's easier to understand the principle of action.

In addition to such non-obvious clouds, there are special services that largely replace the full-fledged applications on the local computer. For example, a user needs to edit a text file in the Word program. To do this, you will need to purchase the program (and the licensed version is not cheap), allocate free disk space on the media, connect the necessary modules. Of course, all this is solved, but what if there are a lot of computers (enterprise)? Spend money on buying license keys? It is much easier to use the cloud service that provides access to certain programs located on its sites. The user needs to go through the browser to the desired site, remotely start Word and open his file for editing. By the way, usually convenient interfaces are implemented in this way.

Advantages of cloud technologies can be listed for a long time. The disadvantages are less, but they are weighty: reducing confidentiality and dependence on the work of a third-party resource.