Education

Cloud computing: “commonly used definition describes it as clusters of distributed computers (largely vast data centers and server farms) which provide on-demand resources and services over a networked medium (usually the Internet).” (Sultan, N.  2009)

What does this mean? Rather than saving your document to your computer/memory stick you save it to the Internet.  This means you can access your documents from anywhere in the world from any device that can access the Internet.

Why would I use it? There are a few reasons why cloud computing can assist you in your work.

• Anywhere anytime access.  You no longer have to be at your own machine to access your data, as long as you can access the Internet your data follows you. You can’t lose it like a memory stick.
• Moving the risk.  Have you ever deleted a document or your computer has crashed and you have lost all of data. With Cloud computing you are uploading to an online service (such Sky Drive and Google Docs), which is far less likely to crash, and they keep all versions, so if you delete all or a section of a document you can recover the previous version.¹ Other services (such a Dropbox) install software to you personal machine that automatically copy selected files to the cloud so they are always in more than one location.
• Most up to date copy.  Currently you may backup all of your data to multiple locations, but how do you keep track of which version is the most up to date?  With cloud computing there is only one copy no matter where you are working on it from ensuring that it is up to date.
• Online collaboration. In the past people have emailed copies of documents to colleges for collaboration but if there are many collaborators and version it can be hard to keep track of it and compiling the final document.  With cloud computing you don’t email the document but rather a link to the online version, now there is only ever one copy of the document with all of the version and contributions.
• Online editing.  Providers such as Sky drive and Google Docs have web based editors so if you are at a computer that does not have Microsoft Office (or equivalent) you are still able to edit your document. Although you may not have the same functionality.

Surely there must be a downside? Most of the providers do require an Internet connection to enable access to the documents.  Sky Drive and Google Docs have a 50mb upload limit on individual files with a total space of 25Gb. Dropbox provides an offline mode for accessing your data that has no limit on file size but their free service starts at 2Gb (expandable to 8Gb via recommendations) they offer a monthly subscription for greater storage space.

All of these are services and as unlikely as it may seem,  they can fold.  When signing up for any cloud service it is always a good idea to read the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) to find out where your data is being stored,  who owns the data and will you be able to retrieve the data in the unlikely event that the service provider you choose ceases to trade.

Who provides these services? There are many providers of cloud services here are a few:

What is the Cloud? (download PDF version of this Post)

Have a look at this video for more info: google docs in plain english