10 Things The Cloud Made Obsolete
Cloud services are all around us from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep. There are so many aspects of our lives that are made more convenient by the development of the cloud. From file sharing to music streaming, how we interact has vastly changed in the last few years. Much like the migration from tape to CD, it is all too easy to get immersed in the excitement of new developments within the field of technology that we often forget how things used to be. Therefore, we have compiled a short list, though by no means a comprehensive one, of 10 things that are no longer a part of our lives since the invention of the cloud:
1) CD’s, USB’s and external storage devices
Though to a small degree these are still being used, with the boom of cloud storage, the trend is definitely moving towards the extinction of physical storage.
2) Bluetooth
Since file sharing is such a large part of cloud computing, time and battery draining phone sharing features such as Bluetooth have become old-fashioned.
3) Client directories and trackers
Integrated client information is much more conveniently managed with SaaS providers such as Salesforce than with traditional client directories and trackers.
4) The office punch card
Applications such as OfficeTime are able to track when people punch in and out of work, and then generate invoices and reports based on that data. The punch card is silly in comparison.
5) Wallets
Since it is now possible to pay using cloud technologies on your phone, it is no longer necessary to carry money on you.
6) Travelling with a laptop
With remote login you no longer have to physically drag your laptop around with you.
7) Blockbuster and other film rental franchises
Service providers such as Netflix have made sure you never have to leave your house again to rent a film.
8) MP3’s with limited capacity
Since the release of mp3 cloud services such as Spotify, your travelling music bank is no longer limited to a fixed storage capacity, but unlimited songs and playlists are at your fingertips.
9) Emailing documents
Oftentimes, email providers have such stringent limits on the size of the file that can be emailed that it can take multiple emails to send all the data you want. Consequently, more and more users are bypassing the process altogether and using cloud file sharing as the standard.
10) Network servers
Traditionally, network servers were stored in the office and you had to connect to the network to access your files. Nowadays, you are either storing and sharing your files on services such as Dropbox or you are using heavy duty servers such as those offered by Oracle or Amazon.
11) Books?
We put this under as a bonus because we are unsure if this will be an inevitability. Only time will tell if the cloud will be the death of the printing industry and physical copies of books.
