Most of us are using Managed Cloud without thinking about it. When you do a search on Google, the computer you are using isn’t finding the information for you. It is more or less a messenger. Instead, the keywords you type are sent over the internet to one of Google’s thousands of computers, and they look up the results and send them back to you.

Web-based email is another example. Emails are processed and stored on a server far away and you can access them from anywhere in the world.

Creating, sharing and storing documents over the online is another way the cloud is utilized. Google’s Chromebook is an excellent example of this. When using Google Documents on the Chromebook, you are signing on to a web-based service. You are still using software similar to Microsoft Word, for example, but the difference is that it is running on a computer elsewhere at one of Google’s international data centers.

This means that you are no longer responsible for the computing end of things. There are no licenses or viruses to worry about. Google takes care of that, and all you have to do is create.

You can also buy cloud services from a provider on an on-demand or subscription basis. There are public and private cloud services, i.e., internet or intranet. Free services like Google and paid services like Amazon are examples of public clouds. Private clouds are accessed through a secure network that operates like an intranet.