What is the cloud?

The cloud isn't a topic reserved for IT people. Anyone with a phone already uses it and already benefits from it without being an expert — but do you know what it is and how it works?

The cloud is computing over the internet. What does that mean in practice? That instead of relying on the storage, speed and processing power of your own devices, what you are really doing is connecting to another computer across the internet.

That other computer is the one supplying the physical resources for whatever task you need: storage, processing speed, connection speed, and so on.

You have seen this at work already. When you watch a film on Netflix or play music on Spotify, none of that content lives on your device — it sits on computers connected to the internet, and you simply connect to them to get it.

It isn't a single machine either, but a large pool of computing resources tied together by a high-speed network. To understand how it works, three ideas are enough: virtualization, on-demand usage and scalability.

Virtualization

In plain terms, it means several computers can run at the same time inside one physical machine, sharing its resources between them.

Scalability

Physical machines and virtual resources let you match what you have to what you need. You can run on very little today and grow tomorrow if the business calls for it — and that change happens almost immediately, not in the weeks it takes to buy and install hardware.

On-demand usage

As you can imagine, running infrastructure like this is not cheap. Because the cloud is scalable, you consume only what you need and pay only for what you are actually using.

That last point matters most if you own a small or medium-sized business. You no longer need to sink a fortune into a server room of your own. You can take exactly the resources your company needs, and pay for those alone.

Understanding the cloud and making the most of it is now part of running any business, whatever its size. Knowing what it is and how it works is worth the time for anyone who uses technology at work.

Remember: technology isn't complicated — and we'll explain it in plain language.