High speed Internet brought us, the users, many things: streaming media, the ability to work with larger files, online office suites, etc. It also brought one other service, maybe the most important of all: the ability to backup our data online. Let’s see how we can benefit from this.
I first began to use the Internet at home about 13-14 years ago. Considering that even months mean a long time in the technology world, the mid-90’s must have been light years ago. In those days we thought that 1.5 kilobytes per second meant there was something wrong; the system was giving incorrect results. We begged for 1 kilobyte per second consistent speed; 500-900 bytes per second was common. We routinely got disconnected a couple of times per night and tried to reconnect. Downloading 300 kilobytes from the Internet was what we thought we wanted. We even waited until midnight, because then the connection was more stable. “Uploading” was not a thing that we knew about. The times have changed - dramatically.
This change has brought many advancements both in terms of hardware and software: now everything is faster. These fast and stable connections allowed us to stream media from the Internet (online radios), work with large files (at least sending/receiving megabytes of attachments in an e-mail), and most importantly of all, the ability to backup our files.
You might wonder why you should backup your files to the Internet when you have external hard drives,CD/DVD burners, network attached storage, etc. The answer is not complicated: when you backup your files to the Internet, you can access them from anywhere at anytime. Your data is distributed among the servers so that they are immune to hardware failures and you are not responsible for taking care of hardware issues.
Internet based technology usage, like uploading your files, working with office documents, and using online operating systems is defined as “cloud computing.” The reason the word “cloud” is used is because, in flowcharts, the Internet is always shown as a fluffy cloud. You probably are already using some aspects of cloud computing. Working with Google Docs or Zoho Office, or uploading photos to Picasa or Flickr, are examples of working within the cloud.