What is cloud computing? How it works?

Do you know what Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, Disney, Amazon, Tinder, Netflix, Instagram, and thousands of other platforms have in common? They all use cloud computing.

When we talk about the idea of accessing various services and files without the need to install or transfer files to your computer, but only using the internet, we are referring to the concept behind the so-called cloud computing, or in good Portuguese, cloud computing.

In this article, we will understand the concept behind the word cloud computing, how it works and what its features are for our lives. And we will still see what are the benefits of the cloud computing system, which has been revolutionizing the digital age.

What is cloud computing?

We can define cloud computing as the provision of on-demand computing services over the internet.

Cloud computing works for all audiences, from the simplest of internet users to small, medium and large companies, which increasingly need to use cloud computing services to grow, increase revenues and reduce costs.

That’s because cloud computing is the delivery of information technology resources on demand over the internet. And how it interferes in the day-to-day of a company, for example. Well, instead of buying, owning and maintaining physical data centers and servers, your business can access technology services such as computing power, storage and databases as needed using a cloud provider.

This strategic choice tends to generate significant savings in resources, in addition to other advantages that we will talk about later.

But its use is not limited to the corporate world. In fact, we cannot imagine the world today without thinking about how cloud computing is installed in every part of our lives, such as using email, or using online spreadsheets, or using file hosting and synchronization services, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

How does cloud computing work?

Let’s think about a situation: you just took a trip to France and there you made dozens and hundreds of videos and photos in very high resolution. Upon arriving from a trip, he noticed that his computer did not have enough memory or space to store these files efficiently and safely.

What is the solution found to solve this problem?

Use a service like Google Photos, which will store your files efficiently, safely, and you will be able to access them just by having access to the internet, as they are stored in the cloud, that is, on the internet. This is how cloud computing works.

Keeping it in the cloud will ensure that your files don’t depend on a space inside your computer, and therefore, don’t depend on your computer’s health. Files that are kept only on one computer, for example, depend on how it works. If the computer breaks, it stops working, the files disappear.

This is one of the biggest differentiators of cloud computing: it guarantees the life of your files or your data, or your corporate systems, regardless of whether you have a computer or data center.

Cloud computing and the corporate world

So far we’ve talked about how cloud computing benefits our daily lives, through the use of email services such as Gmail, which offers a space for you to store files, or through the use of an online spreadsheet, or through the consumption of services such as Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, among others.

However, thinking about the corporate universe, cloud computing has revolutionized a large part of the industry, if not all.

Sectors such as agriculture, finance, retail, healthcare, and many others, benefit from the use of cloud computing to grow, develop in a solid way, and above all, increase revenues and reduce costs.

And how do they use cloud computing? We will see this later.

Cloud computing applications

We say that the healthcare industry benefits from cloud computing, and this happens, for example, when they use the cloud to develop more personalized treatments for their patients.

Financial services companies, for example, use the cloud as a basis to detect and prevent fraud in real-time, generating more security for companies and their customers.

Every company, whether public or private, small or large, uses the cloud computing system to remain competitive and reliable.

We can define some applications for cloud computing: