Almost everyone is hopping aboard the cloud. New effective web development articles usually contain references to cloud technology. It is clear that cloud-based computing systems will be here to stay and dominate the common computer application programs.

The move from mainframe architecture to personal computing marks the change towards offloading certain facets of it to the cloud. We’ve witnessed Apple’s move from MobileMe to iCloud.  Since most people are obsessed with this overused buzzword, what will be next and what will become the paradigm change?

Cloud computing is a technology which combines the internet, web browsers and rich applications in one. To provide a cloud-based service, a provider uses cluster of servers to offload processing or storage for a user. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud or commonly known as Amazon EC2 is one of the most traditional cloud services.  It offers an online computer backed by the Amazon grid and enables processing and storage abilities of the virtual computer to be scaled up or down when needed.

Here’s an incredible solution for new websites that does not want to purchase hardware – simply purchase the computing time and storage that you actually use. However, there’s a security risk that Amazon could peek at your top secret data or if Amazon suffer a massive outage, your data might be lost. Still, the advantages over-shadow the risk involved.

Looking into the future of the cloud is more interesting than discussing its current merits and failures. With each development, there will be cloud companies that will develop a distinct segment. It is great to run an entire virtual server on Amazon’s cloud, but what if you need to offload three dimensional rendering?

It is likely that the cloud with specific API’s that handles automated upload and rendering of 3D scenes will be tweaked to become more efficient than the generic virtual server. This render cloud may use Amazon’s cloud, but will provide users with tools that suit this purpose.

The cloud is also changing from the consumer’s point-of-view. Apple’s iCloud offers their OS X and iOS client with the ability to sync their device’s content with the cloud. This is more beneficial as users can synchronize mobile applications with iCloud.

iCloud offers a simplified way allowing any Apple device to backup more than just contacts. It could be safe to predict that in the future, other mobile operating system providers and mobile phone manufacturers will offer the same system.

The cloud signifies an offloading of information from external hard disk drives and online storage systems powered by the cloud architecture. The dominance of LTE and other wireless data methods also brings a pleasant scenario.

Third-world nations, from the Internet connectivity perspective, will probably be late to adopt this trend. They will follow suit and it will be like a virtually-pure nirvana.

It will be like a world where all your data is in one virtual place. Everything will live in a distributed, grid-based computing environment, and can be accessed from any device anywhere. This could worry those with privacy, security and data safety concerns, but this is the road where the cloud is going and it will take us there.