What is a cloud and how do I get in?

For a few years now, people have been hearing about "going to the cloud" and getting offers for cheap cloud access. But what actually is a cloud and who needs something like that? xiaomist explains the terms to you and shows you who needs to go to the cloud and who can confidently ignore them.

Cloud is an English word meaning "cloud". Of course, that is not the case when it comes to THE cloud. But it does have one property in common with clouds.

The alternative to the cloud is a NAS:

What is Cloud?

The cloud is actually just an abbreviation of the term "cloud computing". This means uploading, storing, processing and retrieving data via the Internet.

These can simply be hard drives in a server, parts of which are rented out to paying customers, but also huge server farms, such as those offered by Amazon with its "AWS" service. Not only files are stored there, but also extensive Internet applications, which then access the pure computing power of the processors.

Well-known companies from all over the world use this service to have fail-safe server structures without having to buy and maintain them themselves.

Basically, the cloud consists of a huge heap of computers that can be accessed via the Internet and on which all kinds of data are stored or applications are run.

The name "cloud" comes from the fact that the actual technology is usually completely hidden from the users. They don't know where the server halls are, what else is happening there and how all the computers are networked. As in a cloud, everything remains impenetrable in the fog.

Who needs the cloud - and who doesn't?

Almost everyone reading this article is already using parts of the cloud. Your emails are stored in the cloud. Your Google account uses the cloud to save your pictures and emails there, to store your location data and to provide any data in Google Drive.

Apple's online storage is called iCloud and thus indicates its use. And if you use a Windows computer, you automatically have an account in the Microsoft cloud "OneDrive".

However, when the talk is of "having your data in the cloud", this usually means cloud storage space that you have rented specifically in order to store larger amounts of data " on the Internet ".

There are plenty of free cloud storage services, but they are all limited to relatively small amounts of data. You can now either look for a suitable provider and choose the one with the best price-performance ratio for your requirements, or you can expand the previously used offers for a fee.

With "Google One", for example, you get plenty of storage at a good price, which is simply attached to your existing Google account and which you can even share with family members. In this case, Apple users would top up their iCloud account or use the relatively new iCloud+ (Plus).

Anyone who has had storage problems with their thousands upon thousands of pictures and videos on their cell phone can actually need something like this. Such cloud offers are also worthwhile for computer and mobile phone backups . For example, you can create a Google Drive backup on your PC, which saves selected data in real time in the cloud and also makes it available on all other devices: Work in the office, access the data at home and do it in the next day office further. In this case, Mac users would then rent space in the iCloud.