I run a small web-hosting company on the side, and cloud has been huge for us. Before we used to have to buy the hardware, potentially put it together and configure it, install the OS, take it to the data center and screw it into racks, run mountains of cables… basically a big giant hassle to add any additional servers.
We’ve since moved to cloud-based hosting via VPS, and if a client needs a new server, we have it up and running in about 5 minutes with the click of a button with any variety of CPU/RAM/OS combinations. If they are expecting a traffic spike, we can re-size their slice in about 5 minutes with the click of a button. After the traffic has passed, we can re-size it back down the other way in about 5 minutes with the click of a button. If their app crashes or DB gets corrupted, we can restore from any number of backups in a matter of minutes with the click of a button. We can clone slices so that if a client needs multiple servers, they can configure one and then simply duplicate it instead of dealing with old-school solutions like drive ghosting. These abilities are the foundation of cloud computing, starting at the server level.
I can not express how much easier this has made it to run my business. Not to mention how much money it has saved us. No more leasing rackspace in datacenters, no more buying expensive server-grade hardware, no more RAID configurations. We’ve become a mean, lean, hosting machine thanks to cloud.
Similarly on a personal level, pretty much everything I do is on the cloud. Backblaze gives me piece of mind that my tens of thousands of photos and 250GB media library that I’ve spent 10+ years curating are safe in case my Time Machine goes down in flames with my house. It’s a backup of my backup. Google Apps allows my digital life to sync between all my computers and devices, from email to calendars to contacts to RSS feeds. My wife and I can collaboratively edit Christmas shopping lists or household budget spreadsheets from anywhere. Netflix streaming provides our family with hours of entertainment for pennies on the dollar compared to cable or going to the movie theater. Dropbox allows me to easily share files with clients/friends/family in addition to being able to access the files from any of my devices.
Now if only I could get a cloud-based streaming media library, I wouldn’t have to worry about filling up my hard drives with my ridiculous collection of music. Last.fm/Pandora/Rdio are cool, but I want *my* library available anytime anywhere. My money is on Apple making this happen with their new billion dollar data center.
What Google is trying to do with their cloud computers is the future. It’s not there yet. Until I can run Photoshop, Eclipse, Ableton Live, etc, I’ll still have my trusty local computer doing the heavy lifting. But it’s a start. For most people who use their computers for simple things like web browsing, chat, email, etc, it could be enough.
