4 Innovative Uses for the Cloud
The cloud is so ubiquitous with modern computing that it’s hard to imagine a time without it. But the technology that we enjoy today is still a young and budding innovation.
Indeed, the cloud has evolved from simply offering off-site storage to providing solutions for better collaboration, increased processing power, and more efficient communication. These advancements are only four of the innovative uses for the cloud that we’ve seen over the past 30 years.
Better Collaboration and Communication
Image via Flickr by NEC Corporation of America
Not too long ago, the process of producing a document shared among several people took much back-and-forth effort, printing and marking up documents, countless emails, and postage fees to get a copy to all involved in a project. The cloud has certainly been a blessing for collaboration. Innovations such as making changes to Excel sheets in Google Docs and signing legal documents online have made business processes far simpler and more affordable.
Using the cloud for technology is viable today, and moving forward, we’ll see more and better technology to support seamless video conference calls, reliable Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and other collaboration and communication tools delivered courtesy of the cloud.
Amplified Processing Power
Using the cloud boosts processing power by allowing individuals and businesses to store data off-site, which frees up on-site storage space. Although you’ll get the greatest boost to processing power by upgrading your hardware, offloading labor-intensive processing to the cloud has interesting applications for the future of tech. For example, intense graphics processing could be done via the cloud rather than with on-site hardware. Cloud computing is also essential to the success of modern innovations such as artificial intelligence.
Delivery of Enterprise Applications
Delivering enterprise applications through a website may sound a bit basic today, but in 1999, it was a major milestone in the history of cloud computing. Salesforce.com was the first to break into this market, but today, enterprise solutions are readily delivered through the cloud by companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. These services have been a reality for decades, and in the future, we’ll see stronger, safer applications delivered to businesses via the cloud.
Improved Data Security
The cloud landscape has widely expanded since the 1990s, and today, it has uses for almost everything a business does. These uses include security for data applications and any process executed in the cloud.
The cloud improves enterprise security by better regulating traffic to servers, better inspecting and filtering data, and offering secured encryption to protect data stored in the cloud. Businesses can also take advantage of cloud access security brokers to further bolster their data security. This service provides greater data safety controls for organizations by adding a layer of protection between on-premises infrastructure and cloud-hosted software.
Every day, we see improvements to cloud technology and new applications that make life easier and safer for businesses and individuals. Better collaboration, processing power, and security are a few examples of how we use the cloud now, but this technology has permeated almost every part of modern computing. Look forward to a future where this technology is more robust and safer than it is today.
