What is cloud storage? Indian government planning to store local cloud data locally

Dheeksha Mahesh, [email protected]

So what is cloud? Storing data in cloud … what is your imagination of storing data in cloud?

For instance – renting a house
To simplify, here is an instance… What will you do when you do not have your own house to stay? You will take a house for rent, right?  When you move to different city, you may rent a space or share a room or stay in PG… whatever you can afford to.

In the same way… just replace data (as in pictures, word, excel, adobe etc., to mention few) with people, and computer with house. We store all the data in our computer. But when data exceeds and computer run short of space, what to do? Can we store in neighbour’s computer? No!!! Our data is private and its only for our eyes and ears.

Storing in huge data server
So we store it on what is called ‘CLOUD’ . We store it in other huge computers or what it is called data servers (rented house) paying a price (rent) for the usage. We use internet to transfer the data from our own computer to the other computer i.e., data servers. These data servers are called cloud.

Lock and key: Id and password
Across the world, big corporates like Microsoft, amazon, IBM have huge data server centres or houses. Building a data centre and maintaining it incurs huge cost. When we save our picture on cloud using internet, that picture is saved in one of the huge computer or data server across the world. For instance, if  a picture is saved in cloud, it may have been saved in the data centre which is located in the USA. Everyone have an email ID and password for the same. Just like how we need a key to enter the house.

Larger scale:

Companies also have huge data generated every day, but cannot afford a data centre and also maintain it. So companies tie up with data servers’ providers and store their data for a price.

Store data generated in India in local data centres

According to Reuters, the government panel is working to bring in a policy to store data generated in India locally. Presently as mentioned earlier, our data is stored across the world. Now government is mulling a policy to store data generated in India in data centres that are located in India.

Activity:

Do you want to check where and who stores a particular website data? Check this link http://www.whoishostingthis.com/ , type the website name and search. For instance, type: www.instagram.com, and hit search… Let us know who host or stores Instagram data…