How would you explain Cloud computing to someone who has no knowledge about it?

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I’m trying to explain to my grandparents but it’s really tough because they can’t seem to understand the complex terms. Any advice on how to break down Cloud in layman terms using an analogy?

In: Technology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The cloud is basically a big data storage computer that your computer saves files and other stuff and sends it to that computer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The Cloud simply means: someone else’s computer.

You are just connecting to someone else’s computer to do whatever you were going to do.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I would say bee hives are a good analogy regarding the collection of a lot of small data element and having tons of workers churning that into honey.

Cloud storage… not sure. Maybe extending the concept of data lakes to define large reservoir when you can pick up your data but everybody put their data in the same place. It makes safer as one team protects your own reservoir which can build up strong architecture.

I hope these are interesting ideas!

Anonymous 0 Comments

Running a program on big computers on the internet and sending the results to your computer instead of running the whole program on your own computer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

you basically send the work to your friend and then your friend does the work and sends you back the results. except your friend is some server on the internet and the work.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Use the analogy of a safety deposit box. Once you learn what that is, you can teach your grandparents something they don’t have the language for.

You will know you have lost them as soon as you say computer, or any computing term.

Good luck.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Renting a house vs buying it. Either way you have a space where you can store your stuff, eat, and sleep. Renting requires less money up front ($1000 security deposit on a rental vs $20,000 down payment on a house) and renting has a shorter commitment (1 year lease vs 30 year mortgage). But over the long run, a rental will cost more than buying the house, so there are trade offs.

With cloud computing you are renting someone else’s server instead of setting up your own. This saves you the cost of buying the hardware (servers, network equipment, uninterruptible power supply), paying for the network bandwidth, and hiring someone to manage the system. Also, if you have a sudden need for more capacity the cloud provider can usually scale you up much faster than on your own.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s just computer rental.

There is nothing fancy, really. It’s marketing buzzword for computer rental.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Many different kinds of small, medium, and large businesses need buildings in order to run the business.

There are lots of reasons a business of any size might choose to rent rather than own a building:

– Buildings are expensive. Renting from a landlord and making a monthly rental payment is much more affordable than buying a building outright (even if you get a mortgage loan, you’ll likely still need a substantial down-payment).
– Maintaining and fixing the building is the landlord’s problem, not your problem. You can focus on running your business.
– A whole building is too big for many businesses. Landlords often divide up their buildings into smaller rentable units.
– You may need a building in a specialized commercial or industrial area with infrastructure that can efficiently provide lots of key resources like road / rail connectivity, water and electricity.
– It’s highly desirable to have technology and building design features that keep multiple businesses renting different parts of the same building from affecting each other. (Things like soundproofing, separate entrances, and separate utility meters.)
– Flexibility. Cancelling a rental is easier than selling a building.

When it comes to computers, the economic situation has a lot of similarities:

Many different kinds of small, medium, and large businesses need computers in order to run the business.

There are lots of reasons a business of any size might choose to rent rather than own a computer:

– Computers are expensive. Renting from a provider and making a monthly rental payment is much more affordable than buying a computer outright.
– Maintaining and fixing the computer is the provider’s problem, not your problem. You can focus on running your business.
– A whole computer is too big for many businesses. Providers often divide up their computers into smaller rentable units.
– You may need a computer in a specialized building (datacenter) with infrastructure that can efficiently provide lots of key resources like network / Internet connectivity, cooling and electricity.
– It’s highly desirable to have technology and computer design features that keep multiple businesses renting different parts of the same computer from affecting each other. (Usually called “virtualization”.)
– Flexibility. Cancelling a rental is easier than selling a computer.

The main difference is in how computer rental is handled:

– When you rent a new business facility, it will take you a long time to get everything set up just right — to customize a newly rented business location, you’ll need to bring in and set up shelving, tables, inventory, cash register(s), etc. This will take multiple days, or maybe multiple weeks.
– When you rent a new computer, you can usually set it up in seconds or minutes — to customize a newly rented computer, you just need to upload your software and data. This will take multiple seconds, or maybe multiple minutes.

This difference is important. Computer rental is extremely flexible, many providers allow you to rent computers by the hour (or even by the minute). The rental and setup process itself can be managed automatically by a computer program. So you can set up a “manager” computer to monitor for when your website is slow due to too many customers at once, and then send a message to the provider’s “manager” computer to order more rental computers to serve the increased customers. (And conversely when your number of customers drops and your website’s computers are mostly idle, your “manager” computer can send another message to the provider’s “manager” computer to release possession of “extra” rentals you no longer need.)

The point is that both the renter and provider can have a completely automatic, computerized, Internet-enabled process for initiating / cancelling rental orders, taking possession, and setting up rental units.

This kind of flexible rental market is pretty new. It emerged mainly due to better technology (virtualization, Internet payments). People rented computers before, but it was usually either expensive whole-computer rentals, or “shared” plans (think cheap thin-walled apartments because good soundproofing materials and building techniques weren’t invented yet.)

Once the technology was there, big companies that were already running lots of computers, like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, became providers of rental computers. So did dozens, maybe hundreds, of smaller companies and startups. It completely changed the way business software systems were designed — instead of having a relatively fixed, manually managed long-term fleet of computers or a single powerful computer, you have a more flexible, automatically managed, short-term fleet of small rentals.

Because it was such a revolution in the computer industry, people decided it needed a name, so they called it “Cloud computing.”