As explained in our Cloud Storage vs Cloud Backup page online storage services are primarily set up to be the primary location your working files are stored.
You might keep a copy of the file on your local machine and the Online Service will undoubtedly keep backup copies of your files but the key feature of Online Storage is that the working file is stored online – for now lets forget about backup and focus on storage.
Many people use services line Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive to share working documents with colleagues or to make it easy to access these from different locations. The live Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation lives on the Cloud Service providers server – it is stored there and when you want to uopdate the file you are making changes on the Cloud Server.
Who Needs Cloud Storage?
Anyone who works on multiple devices in multiple locations and needs to access and edit documents.
Only a few years ago people would bring a flash drive with them to work on various documents. The problem here is that this very vulnerable flash drive bacomes the Main Storage, often with no backup. and easily lost, damaged or corrupted.
Cloud Storage offers these users the opportunity to store multiple of file types online with the ability to view and edit from anywhere plus have automatic backups.
Teams of people who need to share and edit data
Traditionally when multiple users wanted to work on the same document or file, they would have to work on it one at a time. Cloud Storage now offers teams of people to keep specific files online and all can edit. Some services like Google Drive allows multiple users to work on the same file simultaneously.
Project Management and To Do Lists
Many invovative applications now allow users to access shared To Do lists and more sophisticated Projest Management tasks.
More information on Cloud Storage
Introduction to Cloud Storage at About.com
The video below from UK BroadBandBuyer does a reasonably good job of explaining what The Cloud is and where your data iis stored. It does not quite describe the difference between Storage and Backup.
In the video the photo of Frank is stored on your local computer. But not only is his photo Backed up to several cloud servers the photo is also available to view online. So Franks photo is stored (ie you can view, and in some cases edit the image) and backed up to multiple locations.
