Millions of people use the cloud every day without really knowing what it is.
“It’s often the first thing we touch in the morning and the last thing we touch at night,” says Geoff Hollingworth, a software engineer and cloud computing expert who works at Swedish telecom giant Ericsson.
The term was actually coined in the mid-1990s and reportedly stems from how computer networks were depicted in early diagrams.
And while there’s been some progress since 2012, when 51 percent of people believed that stormy weather affects cloud computing, understanding of “the cloud” and its significance is far from universal.
“The functioning of society is increasingly dependent on being online, and the industrialization of the cloud is akin to having everything connected at all times,” Hollingworth explains.
“This means that everyone on the planet can have access to whatever sort of computing resources they need instantaneously — and that’s truly mind-boggling.”
Playing with Lego
Hollingworth suggests thinking of “the cloud” as a huge bag of Lego bricks. Any child can find and assemble various bricks into any number of toys or structures. After one child finishes with one Lego creation, it can be disassembled and the bricks thrown back into the pile for the next child to use.
Because the bricks are constantly being built and disassembled, the single bag of Lego can spawn an endless supply of toys to countless children, constantly morphing to fit the tastes and trends of whoever’s turn it is to play.
Similarly, cloud computing allows computing resources to be assembled and deployed according to the needs of countless users.
“Cloud computing is the most efficient form of generating computer infrastructure to date,” he explains.
“It’s incredible how quickly you can create, use, and reuse infrastructure in the cloud.”
One of the many ways Ericsson uses cloud infrastructure is to test software, which requires “huge amounts of data” to give systems a real-life simulation on a global scale. Previously, running large scale global tests was a very infrastructure intensive activity.
“With the cloud, we can easily simulate the amount of data and usage equivalent to what a city the size of New York would generate. We just spin up the simulation in the cloud, run the systems, and then disassemble it all,” he explains.