Answer:
Cloud is where you store data on the Internet at some central spot or run applications at that same central spot which you probably do not know exactly is. Data storage is most popular thing to cloud, however many web sites, applications, servers for organizations are on the cloud.’
The major cloud providers are Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle. Each of them has certain things they do better. AWS works well for doing web sites and data storage but is good on others but since originally developed to run Amazon shopping its strengths are there. Microsoft strength tends to be security of your system particularly Active Directory where your network settings are managed. Google is best at just data and Oracle strength is databases on cloud since Oracle main feature and started as a database company.
For these reasons, many organizations find them selves in a multi cloud environment. This presents management problems as each provider works differently and knowing how each works and its terminology and then getting them to all work together. In addition, often you are also keeping some stuff local so a local cloud.
Besides just working each its own way, some companies are developing dashboards to access all and give a common management method. Recently I received a certification as an associate engineer for one company product, Aviatrix. There are others out there, just I got free training and free test from this one, so I tried it and passed. It was interesting how they can make these work together.
Multi-cloud is using multiple clouds which is very common, and the world is not settling on a single cloud product. It has similarities to the equipment side of computers where we have Macs, HP PCs, Dell PCs and various company printers, scanners, etc. all working together.
Send your questions about computers to my e-mail dwight@dwightwatt.com and tell me you read this in this paper. I will pick a question to answer each week.
Watt does computer work for businesses, individuals, and organizations, and teaches about computers at a college in northwest Georgia. His webpage is www.dwightwatt.com.
