Instead of storing your data on your PC, your store is on server on the Internet. You don’t know, or care, where that server is located. Your data might, in fact, be scattered across a bunch of different servers. It’s just all up in the sky someplace (hence the name “cloud”). But as long as you’re connected to the internet, with enough bandwidth, you can’t get at your photos and documents and home movies from wherever you happen to be, using any device you want, such as your mobile phone, a laptop, a media player or an Internet kiosk at the airport. “People are going to put their information not into some device, but into some service that lives in the sky”, says Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, whose “virtualization” software provides a key piece of the cloud puzzle. (Among other things, VMware’s software lets techies combine hundreds of servers into a giant pool of computer power, so applications run more efficiently.)
Moving to the cloud means no more trying to remember whether you left your expense-report spreadsheet on the PC at work or the MacBook at home. No more backing up everything to a thumb drive and transferring it from one device to another. No more copying all your stuff from your old PC when you buy a new one. It also means you can create a repository of information that stays with you and keeps growing for as long as you’re