Volume 4, Number 1

Could You Be Using It Someday?

We have entered an era of Things Cloud: “cloud storage,” “cloud computing,” or, just simply “the cloud,” referring to how IT personnel often represent the Internet in their diagrams. Are there opportunities to save money or get improved processes by moving to the cloud? In our analysis, we find that the answer is a qualified “probably so.”

The Cloud

Most business have already encounter the first embodiment of the cloud, “cloud storage,” also know widely as “online storage,” where data is kept not on your local computer but “somewhere” on the Internet, often accessed through a web portal that serves as a user interface for storage and retrieval. Flikr, Gmail, Facebook, and Remote Backup are examples of large implementations of cloud storage. While cloud storage has been around for a while, the cloud-based concept is in the process of evolving into not just providing data storage but operations on that data as well. We’ve entered the age of “cloud computing.”

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