If we think back of the office setups and peripherals in the late 70’s, it was papers, type-writers and heaps of files. As time progressed to the 80’s, the offices evolved to computers, software, and spreadsheets. But in the 90’s we can say that the foot-stone of a modern office came into existence wherein office was built over a web server by means of a website. It is because of this that today we find it to be over the Cloud which has freed the need of having located at a physical location. Today, no matter at which corner of the world you are in, your office is just a click away. This is the kind of technological revolution that Cloud has enabled us with.
One of the most surprising facts of this decade is when most employees, vendors and even end-users/consumers are unaware that they are unknowingly using the Cloud infrastructure to carry-out certain functions such as file sharing, video conferencing, social networking, emailing, entertainment etc.
Here is a list of 15 most popular services that we’ve been using daily, use Cloud.
- iCloud (file-sharing)
- GoogleApps (productivity and file-sharing)
- DropBox (file-sharing)
- Amazon (eCommerce)
- Facebook (social network)
- Hotmail (eMail)
- Box.net (File Sharing)
- Twitter (Social Network)
- Netsuite (Financials)
- Slideshare (Presentations)
- Skype (Video Conferencing)
- Flickr (Photo-sharing)
- AOL (Content, Communications)
- LinkedIn (Social Networking Service for professional occupations)
- UEFA.com (Union of European Football Associations)
iCloud
iPhone has been leading the list of most popular smartphones in the UK , and someone who has used an iPhone would know of iCloud for sure. Well incase you aren’t aware, iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple Inc.
GoogleApps
Who doesn’t know Google, but did you know that the various services such as Gmail, GTalk, Google Groups, Calendar, Docs offered by the company which we use frequently are hosted over a Cloud infrastructure. You didn’t know it, did you? Well now you do!
DropBox
More popular amongst Web developers, designers and professionals with teams located across different geographies, Dropbox is one of the highly popular file storage and sharing service by Dropbox, Inc. It uses cloud storage to store the files and synchronize it with a local computer.
Amazon
One of the highly popular stores for purchase of multiple brands and products available over the internet today. Also a producer of consumer electronic goods such as Kindle and one of the major cloud providers, hosts it’s eStores over its Cloud platform today.
Facebook
You wouldn’t know about Facebook for sure, would you like to get introduced? Enough kidding. Who isn’t aware about this very popular social networking platform that ever existed over the Internet! You’d agree, inorder to run its operations smoothly, none other but the Cloud can be the only perfect solution.
Similar is the case with LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter, they too use Cloud to deliver and serve to the huge user base without a glitch.
UEFA.com
The Union of European Football Association hosts its website over a Cloud infrastructure as well. This helps them deliver videos; score updates in real-time, deliver news, lets you play games and lots more hassle-free.
Considering the rising adoption of Cloud for the delivery of mission critical website and services, the Gartner prediction that ‘20% amongst the non-IT Global 500 enterprises would compete with the IT organizations by offering cloud services by 2015’, could come true as we approach the year 2015. Many SME’s have already started to introduce cloud to run their IT operations and have observed better performance, higher ROI and overall reduction in Capex.