Cloud Computing

I've been seeing this phrase in many business magazines since last year, talking about how small business became successful using the concept. So what is it anyway?

"Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand" (Wikipedia)

It is simply a substitution for doing business nowadays economically because the traditional ways of doing business is too complicated and expensive.  

Here is a video clip explaining the fundamental ideas of cloud computing:



Not only for business use,but cloud computing can also apply to personal needs.It helps to break the bondage of being forced to use only a single computer. The cloud is a metaphor for describing the internet; cloud computing is a means of using the internet for your computing needs. For example, we can use the basic cloud computing applications such as Google document and the delicious bookmark site without install any software, and all the actions take place on our browsers, and we can access to them by any computer as long as we have internet connection. 


However, there are also disadvantages like when we don't have access to the internet, we can't use this service. One thing that I concern the most about is the issue of privacy (both for persoanl use and for business use). As I explained above that using cloud computing means doing a lot of actions on the internet, so our information is shared by other computers (or at least the server). If there's a sudden closed down of the provider, or the provider accidentally deletes all the data on it, or even worse, selling customers' private information, we're screwed.