A cloud is a mass of water crops or ice crystals in the sky…. Okay, no we aren’t talking about that type of cloud. We’re going to explain internet clouds. The type that stores our data via online services. While most people have heard of the ‘cloud’, most of us aren’t exactly sure what it is or what it does.

The good news is, you’re probably much more familiar with clouds than you think. Some examples of clouds that you’re probably familiar with are programs like Netflix, Dropbox, iCloud for Apple devices, or Google Drive for Androids.

The cloud refers to software and services that run on the Internet, instead of locally on your computer. Basically, instead of saving something to your computer’s or your phone’s storage, you save it to the internet. Most cloud services can be accessed through a web browser like Firefox or Google Chrome, and some companies offer dedicated mobile apps.

At this point, you might be wondering if it’s safe to save things on the internet? Don’t worry, it is. Businesses like Google and Apple have really good security. All of the files that are stored on their cloud servers are ‘encrypted’, which means the data is scrambled and really hard for anyone else besides you to access.

The key feature of the cloud is that you can access it from anywhere. You know how there are certain things you can only access at work? But then there are other things you’re able to access from any device, as long as you have internet access? Like working on a Google Doc on the work computer and then finishing the same document on the laptop at home? Or how you can share the same Netflix account with all of your family members who live in different homes? That’s the cloud in action.

Keeping data safe and backed up

One of the benefits of using a cloud is that it keeps your data backed up and safe. In the past, if you broke your mobile phone you would lose a lot of the important things you kept stored on it, including photos and contacts. But now these things can be stored remotely, which makes it easy to transfer to your next device. Imagine being able to get back almost all of the data, including apps, contacts, images, and videos, if your phone is lost or broken because that data was stored on the cloud and not on the phone’s storage.

Access data across multiple devices - Mobile, Tablet, Computer and Laptop

Another benefit of the cloud is accessing information across multiple devices. This can come in handy if you need to make changes to a document while you’re out and about. For example, if you keep notes in Google Docs it is easy to update both on a computer or on a phone. If you have a mobile handy and not a laptop, you can still update a file.

This also works the same for accessing existing files. If your phone is dead and you want to show someone a photo, you can just use the laptop. Or if you don’t have a laptop handy you can look something up on the phone, which comes in handy for our next point.

Access your data on the move

Accessing data from different devices isn’t just handy for note-taking or sharing pictures. There are a lot of applications for people that need to access data or information on the move. As long as you’ve got a device handy, everything you need can be at your fingertips. In fact, you don’t even need your own device handy. As long as there’s a device with access to the internet you can login and grab any files that you need.

For example, if you need to access an important file, say for a doctor's appointment or while you’re at the bank, you can pull the information on your cloud drive from anywhere. It will be on your mobile if it’s handy, or if you’re really desperate you can login to your cloud using one of the devices at the business you’re at.

Allow several people to have access to a file

The other benefit of the cloud is easily sharing files with others. For example, if your family are all taking photos at an event everyone can upload their photos to one shared folder for everyone to see. That way everyone can access all of the photos without needing to send a message to the people who took them saying “hey, can you send me those photos you took?”.

This also works when you have multiple people who need to see or edit a document. This could be guidelines, meeting notes, quotes, financial records, shared calendars or do to lists. For example, if you have a list of tasks that need to be done for a club or community group, you can share the list with everyone and they can mark it as completed when the task is done.

Basically, you can see that there are a lot of incredible benefits and practical uses for the cloud. There are even more than we’ve mentioned, but these are some of the best ones.

There are so many different cloud based storage options available to you and navigating around them is different so we recommend that you check out the “how to guides” produced by each one of the cloud providers.

Some of the Cloud Storage Options available to you are -

Apple iCloud

iCloud is Apple's cloud platform that can be used across all Apple devices. You can access and manage your ‌iCloud‌ data on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, and the web.

This link will give you a detailed breakdown of how to set up the cloud across a range of Apple devices - https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud/mmfc0f1e2a/icloud

Google Drive

We also spoke a lot about Google Drive in this article, so if you’re interested in getting started you can find more information here - https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2424384?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

Dropbox

Dropbox is a third party cloud storage provider that works across most devices - which can be ideal if some of your devices are Apple, some are Android and some are Windows.

https://help.dropbox.com/guide/individual/how-to-use-dropbox

Microsoft OneDrive

This is an option provided by Microsoft for people that use their products. Here is a guide on how to get started with Microsoft OneDrive - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/upload-and-save-files-and-folders-to-onedrive-a5710114-6aeb-4bf5-a336-dffa7cc0b77a?wt.mc_id=otc_onedrive#

Samsung Cloud

For Samsung users you can learn how to set up Samsung Cloud across devices here - https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00060518/