Cloud Computing

Cloud computing means using computing services that are hosted on another organisation's servers and reached over the Internet. The service could be storage, software or processing. The servers and the software are not kept on your own computer: your device sends a request, and the provider's servers do the work.

Cloud services run on remote servers rather than on your own device. The provider owns, powers and maintains those servers, and you reach them through an internet connection. The cloud is not a physical place in the sky: it is a way of using someone else's servers over the Internet. When you save a file to the cloud, the file is stored on the provider's servers, and you open it again over the Internet.

Cloud software

Cloud software is an application that runs on the provider's remote servers instead of being installed and run on your device; you reach it by loading a page in a web browser or by launching an app. Your device mainly sends your actions, such as clicks and typed text, and displays the results the servers send back. For example, a band could use a browser-based music studio to record and mix a track: the mixing tools and project files are held by the service, so each band member opens the same project from their own device.

Cloud processing

Cloud processing is when the demanding work is carried out on the provider's servers, with only the results travelling back to your device. For example, a small camera could send a recording to an online service that turns the speech into subtitles. The service does the processing on its servers and returns the finished text. Because the work happens remotely, a less powerful device can use software it could not run well by itself: it only has to send requests and display the results, rather than carry out the processing.