The cloud, or cloud computing can be a confusing thing. We are not talking about the weather, but a place that information is stored and can be interacted with.

The term ‘the cloud’ can be loosely thought of as the Internet. Information in the cloud is stored on servers belonging to and maintained by others—not directly on your local computer.

If you have used Gmail or Yahoo to access your email, watched videos on YouTube, used Netflix, or paid a bill online, then you have used a web application that is operating in the cloud.

While there are different types of cloud computing, suffice it to say that:

1. Dedoose is Software as a Service (SaaS), which is an application running in the cloud that we develop and provide access to when you are interacting with your data and
2. Dedoose currently lives on the Microsoft Azure Cloud environment. Azure is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) where we develop and run all Dedoose services.

The big advantages of using cloud services include:

1. Low subscription costs
2. Pay as you go
3. Dedoose is built, maintained, upgraded for you–you’ll never have to upgrade, patch, maintain, transfer to a new computer, …
4. Very rapid development and deployment of new features
5. Integration and scalability—you should see how we’ve been growing and where we’ll be going next
6. You can work anywhere on any computer.

The biggest concerns about cloud services include:

1. Data security—of huge importance and you can learn more about Dedoose security practices here: http://www.dedoose.com/resources/terms). Less and less a concern these days for many—how do you feel about banking online? Nonetheless, a valid concern
2. Connectivity—yes, you need Internet access to use Dedoose…at least for now
3. Downtime—services can go off line for a variety of reasons which can cause some level of inconvenience, but Dedoose’s up-time exceeds 99.99% over the last year

Check out more about Dedoose and the cloud at this article.