I am scheduled to do a painless introduction to/explanation of “the cloud” to fellow senior citizens. I’ll use iCloud and Google Cloud as examples, I guess. But I’m unclear on whether activities such as online banking or Amazon purchasing are considered examples of “using the cloud.” What’s the line between the cloud and other online activities? If I get that question, I want to be ready. Thanks.
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John Russell
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How Do I Identify “Cloud Services?”
Comments: 2 Responses to “How Do I Identify “Cloud Services?””
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I wouldn't define banking or shopping as cloud services. Typically, cloud services involve user data. So storing file, photos, contacts, calendar events, documents, etc.
For things like this, I usually refer to the Wikipedia page: "Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user."
Maybe read the whole page as it could have answers to some other questions too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
What is the cloud, anyway? It’s basically using someone else’s servers to store your data, instead of your own servers. That’s it.
So I would define the cloud as when you store your data with a company instead of (or in addition to) your computer. Thus banking and shopping? Not the cloud. Backing up your computer to a DropBox type of service, or iCloud.com? That’s the cloud.