Rogue Services and Solutions » Blog Archive » “The Cloud,” a Non-Technical Primer

Ah, “the Cloud.” Or “the cloud.” [I am unsure whether it is a common or proper noun these days. “Internet” vs. “internet” went through the same interesting linguistic evolution, so I’m sure the uppercase/lowercase debate will sort itself out in time].

There is a lot of mystery around the Cloud. What is it? Why should I care? Why do we hear about it all the time? Why do celebs put their naked pics there? Why is Rogue writing about it?

This is an actual definition of the Cloud that I heard in a meeting once: The Cloud is an abstraction of the hypervisor layer.

Not super helpful.

I was trying to think of a good metaphor for the Cloud. If you have read our previous blogs, you know I love them, including the magic box on “Lost” and decaying marriages. I thought about going neo-platonic with microcosm and macrocosm. There is always the store-front comparison (banks, grocery stores). I considered pulling in some imagery from Keanu fangirl classic The Matrix.

In the end, none of these ideas landed for me, and I think that’s because the Cloud just is what it is, it’s not hard to understand (as long as the words abstraction and hypervisor are avoided), and the thing that confuses people is the metaphor we have all already embraced for this technology, the idea of clouds—ethereal, dancing through the atmosphere, the stuff of daydreamy picnics.

What is it?

The Cloud is a distributed system of shared storage accessible via the internet. Instead of relying on one hard-drive from one computer, which is the case for local storage, the Cloud is many, many, many servers in a network (SYSTEM) in very large brick-and-mortar buildings across the world (DISTRIBUTED), interconnected and redundant (SHARED), pooling their memory to provide massive amounts of storage (well, STORAGE).

It isn’t some wacky metaphysical version of the internet, which, for me, is what the Cloud connotes.

And, sure, technical people will be yelling at me 3 minutes after this blog post is published because I’m leaving out details about security and virtualization and radio waves and yadda—but, honestly, the definition above is right enough for our purposes.

Why should I care?

Several companies own Clouds—their servers in buildings they may lease or own, called “datacenters.” These servers house your data and copies of your data for redundancy/disaster recovery. You pay the company to keep your data secure and to give you access when you want it. Microsoft and Apple are two such companies.

Why do I hear about it all the time?

Cloud computing is a real buzz phrase these days. You hear about it because it is everywhere. It is a service that vendors are selling. It is good for customers because it is inexpensive and accessible. It is good for vendors because they are, well, making serious bank. Back to the consumer: All the major players are offering private Cloud services, which creates competition, which is why it is inexpensive. And back to the vendor: If you make a thing cheap and reach the masses, you still make money.

Why do celebs put their naked pics there?

I really have no idea why anyone puts naked pics anywhere, but I assume the Cloud-based naked pic extravaganza is a generational thing. It’s likely that celebs of yesteryear put their naked pics on their local drives or thumb drives, then later kept them on their phones where they could be texted. Now that the Cloud is ubiquitous and so easy to upload to and share from, that’s where stuff goes, naked or not. Today’s celebs’ adult-aged grandchildren will be saving their naked pics to The Cloud 4.0… so we can all look forward to that I guess.

Why is Rogue writing about it?

SharePoint Online is Microsoft’s answer to Cloud-based SharePoint. This Cloud I’m referring to is specifically Microsoft’s, and it is the same Cloud where core O365 and friends (subscription-based access to Project, Visio, etc.) live. With O365, SharePoint Online is inexpensive. SharePoint Online licenses may also be purchased without the O365 bundle at a price point that is comfortable for most small business budgets.

With SharePoint Online, your environment is a “tenant.” Instead of “farm,” which is used to describe the physical infrastructure of on-prem SharePoint, a tenant is the universe where you can spin up site collections. Because your tenant lives in Microsoft’s Cloud, Microsoft manages the farm. You then manage your content, apps, look and feel, and workflows—the stuff we all love about SharePoint.

The Cloud represents a huge evolution for the SharePoint platform. It removes the overhead administration and procurement involved in requisitioning servers, installing and configuring the operating system, and patching/maintaining an aging physical infrastructure. Now all the cool stuff SharePoint is known for—centralization of content, process automation, corporate communication—that used to be available only to large corporations with UPS Store, Kraft Foods, Viacom-sized budgets is open to small businesses on a subscription-based fee schedule.

We think that’s something to write about.

Coming soon: Rogue will host a webinar about migration strategies for organizations that want to move their SharePoint content to the Cloud. It’s going to be a good one.

Thanks for reading!