So, you think you don’t use cloud computing. It’s just a business solution that may or may not be genuinely useful, right? Let’s look at a day in the life of an average person and see how often cloud computing appears.
“Well hello, folks. It’s 5:45am and here’s the morning traffic update…”
Yes, that’s the alarm, and that means it’s time to wake up, make some coffee and feed the cat.
Many people take this time to catch up on the news. While that used to be limited to turning on the TV or picking up the newspaper from the driveway, a lot of people now head directly to the Internet. Some prefer online publications, while others grab quick updates from Twitter.
Guess what powers many of these online sources? Yeah – cloud computing.
While you’re on the Internet, sipping from your hot mug of coffee, you might as well check your email too. You open up Gmail (or whichever email platform you prefer), delete the daily junk mail and discover how much work you have waiting for you at the office.
So, online email platforms. Those can’t possibly use cloud computing…can they? Yes, they can, and they DO.
And if you’re a really productive morning person, you might even catch up on some light reading. Yes, there are physical books, but I bet plenty of people use cloud computing even for this. Maybe you grab your Kindle, peruse the unlimited online inventory of books and find the one you want. Those books are stored for you to find in the cloud! And if you’re the type of person who likes to jot down notes while reading about how to be your own boss, there are apps for that. Cloud apps, to be exact. A popular one is Evernote, which seamlessly syncs your notes between all of your computing devices.
By now the kids are up, and it’s time to get them and yourself out the door.
When you arrive at the office, you set up at your desk. Now, this is the most obvious place to use cloud computing, but you might be surprised at how many ways you use it. If you’re the type of person who likes to hum along to oldies as you type away, you might be using the cloud. Online services like Pandora, Rdio and Songza are all cloud computing services.
And, depending on your company, some or most of your business applications might be running on the cloud. If you use online tools like Google Apps, marketing platforms, calendaring, CRM portals, operations tools or dozens of others, chances are you’re accessing them via the cloud. In fact, studies have found that enterprises use 397 cloud apps on average. Holy cow.
So work winds down and you’re feeling motivated. How about a work out? You head to the gym and pull up your favorite fitness app, which tracks whichever activity you’re doing – running, cycling, jogging, skating. And after your workout, you realize you haven’t even thought of dinner yet. So again, you pull up an app to help you out. There are hundreds of meal-planning apps out there, and these offer grocery lists, recipes, shopping tools and more.
These types of applications are all available to you on your mobile device thanks to the cloud. Are you beginning to see a trend here?
After dinner, you want to relax and hang with the family. The kids vote to watch a movie, so you plop on the couch and pull up Netflix or the iTunes store, directly on your TV. You browse through some movies and choose one. Just like books on a Kindle, this inventory of movies is available to you via the cloud.
It’s feeling a bit repetitive now, huh?
When the kids fall asleep halfway through the movie and you have to pause it to put them to sleep, you can head to your bedroom and pick up where you left off on a different TV or device. Yeah, again, that’s because of cloud computing.
Maybe this all felt a bit redundant, but it easily displays just how implemented into daily life cloud computing already is. It connects us to our work, each other, entertainment channels and more.
