Are you in... Cloud?
Are you in... Cloud?
Who doesn't have pictures, videos or other kinds of documents in the Cloud? Many of you know what we're talking about, but others, even having content saved in the Cloud, may not be so sure.
Cloud storage, or just Cloud, as it is commonly known, is a storage model on the Internet. We're talking about an online system, where stored dara are organized somewhere anyone with the according permissions can access through the Internet, and without the need to stay connected to an internal network or accessing form their own hard drive. However we should point out that there actually is a physical place where data are located, called servers, cloud providers that offer cloud storage services.
Everything started a few years ago…
Even though it may look like something "very new", with the same features as those of cloud computing, regarding agility, scalability, flexibility and multitenancy, cloud storage started brewing around the 60s, along with North American computer specialists Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider and John McCarthy, who were two of the main pioneers of what would become the Cloud years later.
After long years of development, in the 80s, they started applying the cloud as such, when tasks began to be applied on a computer network instead of a single computer. That's how the term started being used, first referring to the phone networks and later on to computing infrastructure. It was back in 1997 when the word "cloud" was first used in an academic setting, together with professor Ramnath Chellappa, who defined it as a new computing paradigm. In 1999, a new achivement was reached when Salesforce proved the advantages of the use of web portals for deliverying their products and the term "Software as a Service" was first introduced.
Little by little, companies started rethinking how they used the Internet and the different ways the network could be used, changing like that the way they offered their services. Together with the steady demand for important data volume, cloud computing began to settle, an then it reached our days.
Cloud types
Within what we call today cloud storage, you may find three different types such as private, public and hybrid clouds.
- Private cloud: It is created within the internal infrastructure of each company that have their own servers, however, data and files stored there can be accessed through the Internet, without the need to have a direct physical connection with servers, thanks to storage space virtualization in servers, which creates its own cloud environment.
- Public cloud: Offered by a provider that makes a computing infrastructure available for their clients, allowing them to use those resources for cloud storage through the Internet.
- Hybrid cloud: As its name indicates, it is a combination between the two previous ones. It allows companies to use public cloud storage for less sensitive information and privated cloud for more confidential issues.
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Is there a limit to cloud storage?
The truth is we could claim that the cloud is limitess, however, everything has its limits, in this case mainly money-related. The capacity it offers ussually varies according to the different providers. It is common to have several service models, starting from free to premium. In the free version, providers offer a storage capacity that reaches 15GB or 20GB. Then under payment, in premium models, the capacity increases until incalculable hights, only conditiond by each one's budget.
