How Cloud Computing Works

Cloud computing allows users to store data on other computers or servers. For example, web-based applications are a form of cloud computing. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about cloud computing.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hi there,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chris Pollette. I'm one
of the editors here How Stuff Works, and with me
is Jonathan Strickland. Hello from the cloud. So we were

(00:23):
going to talk about cloud computing today, right we're calling
this cloud computing one oh one because the term is
reaching saturation in the tech world, and if you're not
in the tech world, you might be confused as to
what all this talk about cloud computing is is in
regards to and and not to mention the other terms

(00:44):
that pop up. Sometimes they're used in place of cloud computing,
and sometimes they seem to be differentiated from cloud computing.
We're gonna try and uh and muddy the one, I mean,
clear everything up for you. We're gonna we're gonna give
our definitive explanation of cloud computing. Well, to start with,
I think what maybe what we should do is just

(01:05):
give you a the most basic overview of the entire thing,
which is basically what we're talking about doing is not
having everything you do be run on the computer on
your desktop, you're actually allowing somebody else to uh maybe
store information or host applications. It sort of depends on

(01:25):
on a lot of different things. You know, how you're
going to be using it and what you're going to
be doing. But that's essentially it that you're actually sharing
some part of the computing process with a network of
other computers. That's correct, and and most of us are
doing this in some form already, or many of us
are anyway. If you have any sort of email web

(01:46):
based email application such as a hotmail or Yahoo mail
or Gmail, any of those, that's sort of a that's
a kind of cloud computing. You are accessing your email,
sending email, storing email all on someone else as computers.
You're you're accessing it through your browser, but the actual
information and applications live on computers that belong to someone

(02:09):
else there in the cloud. So that's what that means.
If you ever hear the information is stored in the
cloud somewhere, that means it's living on servers that belong
to a certain company or certain certain organization, uh that
provide these services. So that's like cloud storage. Then cloud
storage would be if you were to save it on

(02:30):
someone else's servers. Okay, well, so then if you are
using a web based word processor program like Google Docs
or UM like Adobe's um buzzword, then that's actually cloud computing.
Then yes, because you're using an application, you're doing everything

(02:51):
on the web, but the the network, the cloud is
handling the actual computing power. That's right. The only thing
that your computer is really handling is to keep your
browser going and whatever other applications you happen to have
on in the background. But the horsepower is being provided
by this this cloud. Now, there are some other terms

(03:11):
that do pop up when you're talking about cloud computing
that sometimes are confusing. Uh. Those include grid computing and
utility computing. Now, grid computing often is used interchangeably, but
sometimes it's meant more as a way of adding processing
power to an application. So we're talking here about let's

(03:32):
say you have a really, really big computing job that's
going to take one computer thousands of hours to complete.
Grid computing would use a grid of computers and break
that job up into parts, and each computer would work
on a part, and when it completed, it would send
that part back to some administrative computer and then eventually
you could reassemble all these pieces to make the whole.

(03:54):
That's grid computing, So that could be like a setting
at home or folding at home. Basically, these are shared
computing projects where people who are doing research can send
out chunks of information. They have so much that they
can't do it themselves, so they send it to uh
out to individuals like you or me, and they use
their home computers to share in the computing power and

(04:16):
send back the chunk of data once it's been processed, right,
and and then utility computing is more about charging people
to use this kind of uh, these kind of resources,
whether it's processing power or storage. UH. You're you're putting
in a metered rate for people to log in and
take advantage of these resources. Sometimes we refer to that

(04:39):
also as a software as a service. That's more about
let's say that you have a word processing application on
the web that's really really good. UH, you might want
to charge people to use that. That would be using
that software as a service. You're providing a service for people,
but they don't actually get that software. They can access
it over the interne at, but they don't get a

(05:01):
copy of it on their own. Computer. So that's what
utility computing is. So basically what we're talking about then
is not having to lug your computer home every day,
because you should be able to access the same information,
the same programs, anywhere, any time, from any computer that
has access to the Internet. That's correct. Yes, it's supposed
to really free us up. It's also kind of going

(05:23):
back to the old model of the supercomputer. Well that's uh,
it's kind of funny how things end up full circle,
I guess sometimes. All right, Well, you can read more
about this. We have a whole suite of articles how
cloud computing works, how grid computing works, how shared computing works,
and their links to many many others online right now
at how stuff works dot com for more on this

(05:46):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought
to you by the rein Into two thousand and twelve camera.
It's ready, are you