In the same sense, it’s far more efficient and cost-effective to allow a cloud service provider to host and store your data rather than building your own infrastructure. Instead, we have energy providers who essentially operate one big generator that anybody can access, and we all pay for what we use. It’d cost a whole lot and require a ton of maintenance to keep a private generator in your home. So when we talk about using a cloud service, we’re talking about high-level services offered by a provider like Dropbox. But it’s no easy task, and it’s certainly not cheap. Anybody with the right resources and infrastructure can host their own cloud. When you save a file to the cloud, you’re storing it online. With the cloud, you can access your data from any device so long as it has an internet connection. Essentially, it’s a digital storage unit where you can keep all your files.

So, at its most simplified level, the cloud is a collection of servers and data centers scattered across the globe that store data. Cloud service providers will have hundreds and thousands of physical servers, collectively known as “server farms,” located in data centers around the world. When you upload something to the cloud via a service like Dropbox, the file is sent via the internet to a server-a real, tangible server. While you may not save your files directly to your computer, they still need to be attached to some piece of hardware somewhere in the world. People have been able to store, operate, and manage data via the internet for some time, but cloud computing does this on a much larger scale.įirst off, it’s important to clarify that the cloud still requires physical components. “Cloud” is short for “cloud computing,” and it refers to tasks and services provided or hosted via the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis.

What is cloud computing, and how does it work?Ĭhances are, even if you don’t know a thing about cloud computing services, you’ve probably still used them at some point.

What is dropbox and how does it work