Cloud Computing 101

Moving to the cloud. Running in the cloud. Stored in the cloud. Accessed from the cloud: these days is seems like everything is happening “in the cloud”. But what exactly is this nebulous concept?

The short answer is that it's somewhere at the other end of your internet connection – a place where you can access apps and services, and where your data can be stored securely. The cloud is a big deal for three reasons:

• It doesn't need any effort on your part to maintain or manage it.
• It's effectively infinite in size, so you don't need to worry about it running out of capacity.
• You can access cloud-based applications and services from anywhere – all you need is a device with an Internet connection.

That's important because there's a shift going on from office-based work to working on the move. This shift is reflected in computer hardware sales: in 2015 about 270 million desktop and laptop computers will be sold, compared to 325 million tablets and almost 2 billion smartphones.

That makes the cloud a very good place to run business software like customer relationship management (CRM) applications – software that users need to access reliably at any time, wherever they are, and on any device.

The Internet has its roots in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the early 1990s that it had any relevance for businesses. The World Wide Web was born in 1991, and in 1993 a web browser called Mosaic was released that allowed users to view web pages that included graphics as well as text. This heralded the first company web sites – and not surprisingly, most of these belonged to companies involved in computing and technology.

As Internet connections got faster and more reliable, a new type of company called an Application Service Provider or ASP started to appear. ASPs took existing business applications and ran them for their customers. The ASP would buy the computing hardware and keeping the application running, and the customer would pay a monthly fee to access it over the Internet.

But it wasn't until right at the end of the 1990s that cloud computing as we know it today appeared. That's when salesforce.com introduced its own multi-tenant application which was specifically designed:

• to run "in the cloud";
• to be accessed over the Internet from a web browser;
• to be used by large numbers of customers simultaneously at low cost.

Since then the cloud has grown and grown: in 2013 worldwide spending on cloud services ran to an estimated $47 billion. And that's set to more than double to over $108 billion by 2017 as companies invest in cloud services as the foundation for new, competitive offerings.

With a cloud app, you just open a browser, log in, and start working.

That means a field sales representative using cloud-based CRM can get all the information they need from their mobile device. Contact notes can be updated in real time so they are always fresh and complete and available to others – no more waiting to get back to the office to type it in. And sales managers know exactly which deals will close and when, from their desktop machines in their offices, or their tablets or phones when they are out and about.

And this all happens without any hardware to buy and manage, or software to install and update. That's because the hardware and software required is all the responsibility of the cloud company that runs the app. Companies such as salesforce.com have years of experience managing their cloud infrastructure and making sure that it's secure and reliable so that you don't have to.