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Clouds Among Us

Have you ever gone to the local park, set up a picnic with your family, and when one of your members looks up at the clouds, asks you the following with a look of curiosity, “Hey, up there, is that where all the pictures of Gam-gam and us go?”

If your answer was “no”, then you would be correct in your answer both knowingly and unknowingly. How, might you ask?

Simple, one way would be that it’s 2022, and very few people go on picnics with their families anymore since the thought of meeting someone in person (especially in a public setting) has become a bit of “um gross”.  The other way you are correct is any information that is sent to the cloud does not go into an actual cloud.

If you said “yes”, there’s nothing wrong with you aside from the answer. You’re just hopeful and currently, that’s a hard thing to be.

Now, would you believe me if I told you those lovely photos you uploaded of Gam-gam, your spouse, kids, the first home you ever bought, and the person you’re having that affair with whom you hope does not turn out to be anything like Glenn Close’s character from the movie Fatal Attraction are digital items stored in a data center somewhere in a region near you?

Don’t believe me? Oh, I’ll explain how in due time. So, cloud computing, what is it, who and what uses it, how it shapes our world, and whether you can break in without a four-year degree from Harvard are questions we’re going to be answering today.

Everyone gets Ice cream

Cloud computing, while it sounds edgy and sexy is not what the name states. Cloud is a term that refers to platforms for distributed computing. Don’t know what distributed computing is you say? Fret not, I got you.

Imagine you’re at your place of employment and your boss comes to you and says, “hey slave, I need you to work harder so I’m going to bequeath a monolith of paperwork for you to file and it has to be done within two hours from now.”

You look at your boss crazed and confused, there’s no way you’ll have all the paperwork filed in time, also you question… “did he really just address me as a slave”.

Now, let’s say instead of your boss coming up to just you, he holds a meeting with your fellow slaves and you, and delegates the paperwork that he expects to have within two hours. It’s more likely the work will be done within two hours since the workload was distributed.

Take this same example and picture a multitude of your co-workers, all with different job functions they can perform at various levels.  

So, if we were to say you need storage space because you ran out of room on that external hard drive you’ve been hiding in your hollowed version of “Lord of the Flies” labeled “NoFap Challenge”, just dump it in the cloud. Need quick deployment and the ability to scale for the crazy demands of black Friday sales, the cloud has you on that as well.

Remember when I mentioned the information was not going into the cloud but into a data center somewhere near, well this is made possible because each Cloud Service Provider (CSP) has several regions they can operate. Within those regions are some availability zones that house the equipment.

The benefit of having a setup like this is let’s say an earthquake hits and takes out one of the availability zones, since the others in the area back up each other, there’s not a loss in storage, data, or speed and they can still operate without skipping a beat.

Ha, believe me now? Shun you for not believing. A crazy thing to note, you can request a timeframe for use of a satellite. Don’t know what you would do or why you would need it unless you’re trying to groin laser James Bond but that’s insane is all I’m saying.

Could you imagine if companies only hired a handful of people and expected a workload about the size of the state of Utah to get done? Oh no…I forgot they do.

May not Hurt…may

This is buckshot but must be said. Plus, it’s not much of a surprise but wait for it (drum roll…and) … everyone uses the cloud. Cat’s out of the bag on that one, shocker, I know. There’s not one person (unless internet service is not a thing in your area) who does not use the cloud in some form or another.

The cellphone you use to text the “I’m about 6 and a half” followed by triple eggplant emoji to your date whom you met on tinder, connects to the cloud. Laptops, computers, video game consoles, and anything with a Wi-Fi connection use and store information in the cloud with or without your knowledge.

Literally, there are just too many use cases for the cloud to list. Just know, you use it every time you save or upload something that is not on a local drive. Plus, with technology consistently being improved upon the abilities are limitless.

Our world in Cloud

As mentioned earlier, the cloud is pretty much in every aspect of our day-to-day. Cloud has shed some of the burdens of having to run out and purchase physical equipment and warehouse space. Enabling businesses to grow at a faster rate than they have before since (depending on their needs) everything tech-wise is handled for them.

Businesses can focus on getting to market quickly and not be bogged down with in-house issues. Families may be in silos at the dinner table, but people are connected now more than ever due to the placement of information in the cloud.

With or Without

Well, like with trying to get into any field without a degree it’s going to be a bit of work, but you will be able to get there. What does it take to get into this field you might ask? That is up to you since mentioned earlier, there are just too many use cases for the cloud. This means there are a lot of jobs that you could work in the cloud. Just boils down to what tickles your fancy.

But to give a direction and this is according to ziprecruiter.com, an entry-level cloud engineer makes about $87,189.00.

The main things you are going to need to even think about the cloud are knowledge of a programming language is a must; Python is a good start and it’s used a lot.

A debit card because the cloud follows the pay-to-play method, so your card information is going to be required before you receive credits to do anything. Obtaining (you can but not really, it’s a gray area) a certification in cloud computing, especially one of the big three which are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Getting one is good enough, getting more than one is better.

Finally, a portfolio of projects you have worked on either by yourself or with others. A funny thing I’ve heard about getting to work in the cloud is the old notion of “it’s not what you know but who you know”. Funny getting a job in networking deals with you being able to network.

Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then I thank you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Think you have what it takes to do cloud computing?

Script a comment about a project you would make in the cloud.