[opinion]Actually, the "Cloud" is a terrible name for what it really is. We already were using the "Cloud" well before the name was invented. It's nothing more than another computer that is accessed by the intermess. Many of us have done that with our bank/credit cards for dozens of years. Email is actually stored in the "Cloud" and always has been with your ISP. If you have a web site, guess where it's located (of course, you might have your own server in the house
)? Your iTunes and and App Store purchases are still in that "Cloud," also. Of course, TS is 'hosted in the cloud,' for that matter.
Then there are the data storage sites. These are the places that most people think of, now, as the "Cloud." I really appreciate DropBox for allowing me to provide sometimes very large files for a few people. However, this "cloud" is still just a bunch of computers sitting in some room, just like we've been using the Internet since the beginning! The biggest difference is that those computers are more monitored, redundant and reliable than they used to be.
The "Cloud" is not the silver bullet its creators (actually just marketers) hoped, of course. We like to have control of anything we think of as ours. If we can't physically touch, or at least see our stuff, we have feel a loss of control. Some of us parents had similar feelings when we saw our kids driving off in our car!
I suspect that most of us have lost data on our drives or computers; they do crash/die/wear out. Some of us have UPSs that usually allow shutting down the computer in an orderly manner. And even if you've never lost any data yourself, you have undoubtedly seen reports of that at TS. My point is that, since we
know these things can happen, we think it
will happen in that "cloud!" While I don't yet store all my data in that badly named storage space called the "Cloud," I know that more and more people and even a few businesses are. Even large businesses build their own versions of a 'cloud' just to get the safety provided by using widely separated locations for data and users.
Now, if you'll all just send me your bank and/or credit card info, I'll put it on my own hard drives, located firmly on the desk in my house. Absolutely no 'clouds' involved! Well, my brain becomes a little 'cloudy' at times, but I can guarantee 100% protection of your data, as long as I'm in the room, and the power is on, and there are no tornadoes approaching, and the creek don't rise too much, and...
[/opinion]
