The ‘Cloud’
is arguably the hottest trending topic in marketing at present, but what’s all
the fuss about? Waseem Saddique Marketing Services investigates the ‘buzz’ behind the
‘Cloud’.
Waseem
Saddique comments: “In a recent statement issued by Gartner Inc. the company
predicted that 2013 will see one-third of consumers’ digital-content stored in
the ‘Cloud’ system. However, a number of consumers have been left baffled as to
what the ‘Cloud’ system is.”
What is the ‘Cloud?’
In order to
explain the concept of the ‘Cloud’ here’s a simple analogy.
Previous
technologies such as floppy disks, CD’s and even USB drives provided you with a
physical piece of hardware on which you could store those important files,
music and photographs.
The ‘Cloud’
removes the ‘physical hardware’ aspect so photos featured on Facebook, or
movies streamed via ‘Love Film’ for instance, are not stored on the hard drive
of a computer it’s stored somewhere else, the ‘Cloud’.
The simplest
explanation given is that the Cloud is simply a form of Internet storage. A
number of technology specialists would argue that it is more complex than that
and of course it is, but based on the assumption we’re not all technologically
savvy, this explanation will suffice.
In
technological terms, the Cloud, otherwise known as cloud computing, refers to
data that is hosted on or operates via an Internet server. A number of major
digital marketing service providers have such servers in place including:
Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Apple.
‘Cloud’ Benefits
Arguably the
greatest benefit of using ‘Cloud’-based services or ‘Cloud’ computing is that
your data is not stored on one device, it’s accessible across multiple devices.
You can access e-mails and other applications from any computer. Furthermore,
with cloud storage facilities such as Google Drive, SugarSync and Dropbox, you
have the capacity to store those important files.
Another great
perk of ‘Cloud’ storage is the back-up it offers. Even if your computer hard
drive crashes, all is not lost because your files are stored across various
services, which are immediately accessible from another computer.
Waseem Saddique states: “The ‘Cloud’ is extremely beneficial for businesses that have
huge amounts of data to store and based on the evidence the future of digital
content storage is firmly heading in this direction.”
‘Cloud’ Caution
What makes
the ‘Cloud’ so unique is that data is stored on the Internet, the drawback to
that is that an online connection is required in order to access data. This
would not be a complication with a physical piece of hardware such as a ‘USB
pen’.
Waseem
Saddique concludes: “The ‘Cloud’ also raises the question of security, given
that it is an internet-based service. Consumers are understandably protective
of their online digital content and whilst great strides are made to preserve
privacy and security, caution should be taken when using the ‘Cloud’. It’s
recommended that users have strong passwords.”
