Cloud storage has sent ripples through hundreds of industries. The ability to remotely store and flexibly access huge quantities of data has been granted to subscribing businesses and individuals – something that could never occur without cloud storage.
The basic principle of cloud storage is this: client devices can send or retrieve files online to and from remote data servers. Before the popularisation of cloud technology, data had to be stored on expensive but limiting on-site hardware.
The concept of cloud storage was proposed way back in the 1960s by Carl Robnett Licklider. In the mid-1990s, small cloud servers were offered by companies like AT&T. It was not until the advent of fast broadband in the 21st Century that cloud computing became truly useful. Fast broadband speeds enabled cloud clients to save and retrieve vast amounts of data in a practical timespan. Today, huge companies like Apple and Amazon dominate the cloud provision industry, and almost all industries have benefitted from remote data storage.
Here are just some of the services and technologies that have benefitted the most from the rollout of cloud storage.
We live in an age of data accumulation. Spending our lives online creates huge quantities of data. Marketing companies are using this data to tailor advertising and forecast trends. There is so much data to analyse that there is no way a marketing company would be able to store the constantly expanding amount of data they harvest on-site. Cloud storage handily negates this issue.
What is translation management? In the simplest terms, translation management is the systematic translation of webpages and digital content. Traditionally, translation management involved the manual translation of texts by humans or the crude ‘word for word’ translation of database style software.
Cloud storage has made it possible to drastically improve translation management software. This is because databases of a language used by software packages can be vast and consistently updated on the cloud without the user having to do anything whatsoever. This freedom to store huge quantities of data means that modern translation management software can access more examples of sentence structure and cultural-linguistic context.
The success of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is dependent on readily available and secure cloud storage. Typically, cryptocurrency owners actually keep their money in ‘wallets.’ These ‘wallets’ are actually stored on the cloud and are accessible by using a unique passcode. Without cloud computing, cryptocurrencies would not work. In order for cryptocurrencies to work fairly, the system must be aware of the quantity of ‘coins’ mined so that the value of the currency fluctuates.
The relationship between cryptocurrencies and cloud storage is starting to become reciprocal. Some companies are using cryptocurrency exchange to underpin their cloud computing systems.
The healthcare industry was one of the first to utilise cloud computing on a large scale. Apps such as the care app are used for in-home care, to connect teams, coordinators, clients, and their families enabling them to provide the necessary support easily and effectively. Information such as care plans, medication, and diet can be stored to help give more personalised care. Hosting patient medical records and prescriptions on a cloud system solves many problems in large healthcare service structures. Pharmacists and doctors can access detailed medical records anywhere when using the cloud.