Over the past few years we've heard more and more about "the cloud". At first it seemed to be some sort of mythical, magical wonderland but the truth is that the cloud is just the internet. I say "just the internet" as if it means nothing but the internet is of course much bigger than that. Mbaonline recently posted an Infographic detailing a day in the life of the internet that demonstrates just how much we use the web! It's a pretty amazing graphic with some interesting statistics (daily iPhone sales outpace daily birth rates!).
Looking at the article got me thinking about the internet, the cloud and about how we access our personal data. Whether we realize it or not, many of us are developing our own personal cloud. Each day the use of web connected smart phones and tablet devices is growing as people are recognizing the value in staying connected. Companies like Evernote have developed great applications that let us share notes between devices and access them anywhere we like. Apple and Google both give users the ability to store music on the web instead of their home computer and access it from anywhere we like.
For our company, we use an application to provide a cloud based backup of our critical files and data (if you aren't backing your info up to the cloud you really should consider it). This particular product also gives us the ability to provide our staff and customers with a "Cloud Drive" on their computers. The Cloud Drive acts like any storage device (hard drive, USB flash drive, etc...) and lets you drag and drop files to it for storage. No matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection you can access the files from any device including smart phones, tablets and traditional computers. I often use it for storing information I may need for a meeting. That way, I have it available to me at any time! One of our customers uses it to allow their marketing team to save information to it so that the sales team can access the information anytime, anywhere on their tablets.
So just how are you using the cloud and what does your personal cloud contain? Music, photos, video, what else? If you give it some thought you might be surprised at how much you use "the cloud".
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