The Conveniences of the Cloud are Limitless

By Robbie Pleasant, TMCnet Contributor

It’s safe to say that by now, we’ve grown pretty used to the cloud. Cloud computing has reached the point where “Dilbert” comics can make jokes about it (or more specifically, the rush to make everything “cloud-based”), which is a pretty good indication that it’s become ingrained in our technological lives. The reason for its popularity, of course, is tied to all the freedom it provides.

With over 15 billion devices connecting to the Internet (give or take), there’s a massive infrastructure filled with varying and unpredictable workloads. To minimize risk and maximize efficiency across devices, the cloud has become a necessity. A single network cannot always support all the devices and programs that are needed at once, and runs a great risk of losing everything, but from the cloud, there’s less stress on the infrastructure, and the data is at much less of a risk.

With the cloud, there’s a reduced need to worry about hardware, resources, and so on. It can distribute workloads across regions, ensuring that it will always be available and protected from any crashes a single one might suffer; one can even turn their own servers or datacenters into a private cloud, behaving the same as a regular cloud on a smaller scale.

Because of the cloud, there is a new freedom in where people can work, what devices they can work from, the scale of which they use and so much more. Rent or buy, public or private or hybrid, there are so many choices in the cloud you use, and all can provide a level of working freedom that has never been seen before.

“Thirty years ago, the focus of the IT industry was very much on hardware,” says Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems (News - Alert). “Fifteen years ago, it was on the source code of software. Today, the focus is on connecting all of the various pieces. We’re at the leading edge of the Internet of Things where at some point in the not too distant future, everything we use in business and IT will be connected, location-aware, and able to provide, in real-time, data that can be measured and analyzed for decision-making purposes.”

There’s no doubt about it, the cloud has unlocked new levels of potential and freedom. Employees and employers everywhere are beginning to understand all the benefits that the cloud can offer, and are taking full advantage of it. In businesses and in the world at large, the cloud is making so many lives more convenient.

In which way does the cloud set you free?