Read and translate the text and fill in the missing words: connection, decades, hard drive, information, the internet, storing, cloud, local storage. what is cloud computing? "what's the cloud? " "where is the cloud? " "are we in the ) now? ! " these are all questions you've probably heard or even asked yourself. the term "cloud computing" is everywhere. in the simplest terms, cloud computing means ) and accessing data and programs over ) instead of your computer's ). the cloud is just a metaphor for the internet. it goes back to the days of flowcharts (блок-схема) and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus (кучево-дождевые облака) cloud, accepting connections and doling out (раздавать) ) as it floats. what cloud computing is not about is your hard drive. when you store data on or run programs from the hard drive, that's called ) and computing. everything you need is physically close to you, which means accessing your data is fast and easy (for that one computer, or others on the local network). working off your hard drive is how the computer industry functioned for ) and some argue it's still superior to cloud computing, for reasons i'll explain shortly. the cloud is also not about having a dedicated hardware server in residence. storing data on a home or office network does not count as utilizing (используя) the cloud. for it to be considered "cloud computing," you need to access your data or your programs over the internet, or at the very least, have that data synchronized with other information over the net. in a big business, you may know all there is to know about what's on the other side of the ); as an individual user, you may never have any idea what kind of massive data-processing is happening on the other end. the end result is the same: with an online connection, cloud computing can be done anywhere, anytime.
