Have you ever wondered what Cloud actually is? Well it is many things, not just those fluffy things in the sky – they have nothing to do with it.

The Cloud is a network of remote servers, typically hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data, applications and many other services.

CBR has compiled a list of why people regard the cloud as the must-have technology in businesss today.

1. Efficiency

One of the leading reasons for adopting cloud services is to help make efficiencies within your organisation.

Cloud is a great enabler of automation and orchestration of a multitude of different services which will help reduce costs.

You don’t need to run and store everything on premise if you’ve got cloud services to help you, it’s often cheaper and gives you more control over your infrastructure and services.

2. Security

Like everything computer related, security is an important issue for cloud. A number of high profile leaks will have potentially made cloud look less secure than it is.

If you aren’t sure if you’ve heard of any cloud security issues then think again; remember all those celebrities that had private photos stolen? Well that was partly due to people using obvious and poor passwords which made accounts easy to hack.

Phishing scams and other tools were used but now you should find that cloud and its security policies are a lot more secure.

3. Everywhere

That’s right, it’s everywhere and you will have probably used it even without knowing. Ever use Google drive? Microsoft Office apps? Dropbox? Well if you have then you will have used some form of cloud service.

For businesses, whether it’s SaaS, PaaS, IaaS or any other as a Service, cloud will be there in the background. Does your business run Salesforce? Well that’s SaaS and Software as a Service is probably where you have the most of your daily interaction with cloud.

4. Cloud is for everything

Wrong. This one isn’t true, you shouldn’t use it for everything.

Cloud is a tool for on-demand computing, but it isn’t a fix all solution that if applied to everything will give you a better outcome.

For example, hosted desktops, they can be good but they often aren’t as responsive as local software which is running on your PC. So don’t jump to it just because you can.

6. Public

Amazon, Google, Dropbox to name but a few are all big public cloud players and you will probably use at least one of them.

Public cloud provides you with great flexibility and ease of access, often for free, to share and store important files.

It is typically free for many users, up to certain levels of use where small charges will come into play if you want to store and share large files.

7. Private

The option for those highly regulated industries such as finance and health care, where sensitive data needs to be kept within the corporate firewall and under the control of the IT department.

It is because the cloud is set up within the firewall that it is deemed safer, due to an increased control over the data. However, it is deemed a more expensive option due to the higher level of complexity involved in setting it up.

8. Hybrid

The best of both worlds, private to help you manage your private data and security concerns and public to give you the flexibility that you require to share un-sensitive data.

Some of the big companies operating in the space are HP, Microsoft and EMC and it is probably the future for cloud.
Let’s face it, most companies want flexibility and the assurance of security as well, so hybrid appears to be the way to go.

9. Apps

We all use apps and application development is something that has been made a lot simpler thanks to cloud.

With cloud, application development is now something that takes days, weeks or even hours rather than months. This means that apps cost significantly less to develop and can be out in the market much faster, bringing in new customers or improving the services to existing ones.

10. Data location

This is a major issue in Europe and is being tackled by companies building data centres in a number of countries. The point of this is to make sure that data does not leave the country, which can cause legal issues.

Because different countries have different laws regarding how data should be managed, so to stop data whipping through a number of different countries, some have decided that they don’t want it to leave their jurisdiction at all.

Think of it as a private cloud, but on a national level.

5. Football

Yes, football is using cloud, it could be Liverpool FC who use AWS or Real Madrid which is very publicly using Microsoft Azure, I’m sure you will have seen the adverts. Although why American rapper and actor Common is doing the voice over I am not sure.

Cloud is being used by the club to help link the 450 million fans to the club, to help them experience the games and club life through apps.