FOUNDATIONS / LESSON 04
The Cloud Explained.
What "the cloud" really means
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FOUNDATIONS / LESSON 04
What "the cloud" really means
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You've heard "the cloud" about a million times by now. Companies store stuff "in the cloud." Apps run "on the cloud." So what does that actually mean?
Here's the simple truth... the cloud is just someone else's computer.
That's it. Really.
When a company says your photos are "stored in the cloud," they mean your photos are saved on THEIR computers, sitting somewhere in the world and hooked up to the internet.
Here's a simple way to picture the before and after.
Say you want to start an online business. Back in the day, you'd have to do all of this.
With cloud computing, the list looks a lot friendlier.
One thing I'll add from experience. Renting computer power is one thing, but renting your WHOLE business setup is another. I once had a rented all-in-one stack break a client flow I'd spent weeks tuning, and I only found out on a Monday when dozens of forms were dead. Renting the computers is fine (everybody does it), just know what you actually control.
You use the cloud every single day without even thinking about it.
When you save a document to Google Drive, it's not on your computer. It's on Google's computers. That's why you can do stuff like this.
Netflix doesn't mail you a DVD anymore. When you hit play, here's roughly what happens.
Fun twist... Netflix actually runs its app on Amazon's cloud (called AWS), even though the two compete in streaming! The video itself mostly comes from Netflix's own servers parked inside internet providers' networks, so it has a shorter trip to your couch.
Your emails aren't really stored on your phone or computer. They live on Google's or Microsoft's servers. That's why you can do this.
Those millions of songs aren't sitting on your phone. When you tap play, Spotify streams the music from their cloud to your device.
Three companies run most of the cloud.
| Provider | Name | Used By |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | AWS (Amazon Web Services) | Netflix, Airbnb, NASA |
| Microsoft | Azure | Adobe, BMW |
| Google Cloud | Spotify, PayPal |
These companies have massive buildings called data centers packed with thousands of computers. The data centers are spread all over the world, so your data is usually somewhere nearby (which makes things faster).
The cloud comes in a few different flavors.
Save files, photos and data. Think Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox.
Rent computer processing power to run programs. This is where websites and apps actually run.
Store and organize big piles of information (like every user of an app).
Stuff like AI, machine learning, email sending and plenty more, all available to rent so you don't have to build it yourself.
You don't have to buy, maintain or repair physical servers. The cloud provider handles all of that.
Instead of buying a big server that sits around doing nothing most of the day, you pay only for the computer power you actually use. It's like paying your electric bill instead of buying a power plant.
Busy day? The cloud can automatically give you more power. Slow day? It scales back down. Try doing THAT with a closet full of physical hardware.
Since everything lives on the internet, you and your users can get to it from any device, anywhere in the world.
A lot of cloud storage services keep several copies of your data on different machines, sometimes in different data centers. If one server or one building has a bad day, your stuff usually survives somewhere else.
Here's the catch though. Those copies follow whatever you do. Delete a file or let a bug overwrite your database, and every copy changes right along with it. The big providers spell this out in what they call a "shared responsibility" model. They keep the hardware running, and protecting your data (backups included) is still your job. Most of them sell backup tools, you just have to actually turn them on.
You've got all the building blocks now, meaning how the internet works, frontend versus backend and what the cloud really is. Next lesson we'll snap those pieces together and see how they connect when you actually use a website or app...