It's undeniable that the cloud has changed how organizations interact with information in their data center. And it's certainly true that many organizations no longer even have an on premises data center. That's because we can run practically any technology in the cloud. All we need is enough bandwidth and we're able to move that technology to any place we'd like in the world. This allows organizations to put all of their data in the cloud and then be able to access that data from anywhere they happen to be. And of course, if you need additional storage space, additional CPU processing, or more network access, you can simply add that to your existing cloud infrastructure. A good example of a service that we moved very quickly to the cloud was our email infrastructure. Now, many organizations have taken an email server that used to be at their local facility and they're now running that email server in the cloud. In the cloud, we commonly have redundant connectivity to all of these cloud-based services and usually it's over a very high-speed network connection. These cloud services also commonly have integrated redundancy and backup options so that your data is always available and if you do need to restore information, there is always a recent backup available. And not only do these cloud-based data centers have very strong physical security, they have a well integrated security for all of the apps and services that are running on their cloud infrastructure. And you may be using a cloud-based email service already. Your organization may be using Outlook in the Microsoft cloud or you may be using Google Workspace email or other types of cloud-based email services. Another useful advantage of cloud-based services is that there is an almost unlimited amount of storage space available on these cloud infrastructures. If you need more storage space, you only need to purchase more storage space for your system. We can also integrate this cloud-based storage with clients that were running on our desktop systems. So, we can store a file locally on our local storage drive. that file is automatically uploaded to the cloud and synchronized across all of our other systems that have that same client running. This allows us to store information in one place and have that single file replicated to all of our important devices. For example, if you're using something like Google Drive, you can choose which files and which folders you would like to synchronize into the cloud. This allows you to mirror those files so that all of the files on your system are also mirrored to all of your other systems. or you can choose to simply store everything in the cloud and you can retrieve that from the cloud when you want to use it. We become very accustomed to collaborating with others using cloud-based systems. For example, it's very common now to turn on your camera and be part of a group that's having a meeting. This is something that allows you to share spreadsheet information and financial data. You might want to do video conferencing or do presentations over this collaboration tool. or you may be all editing the same word processing document and everybody can see those changes as they're being made in real time. And of course, if you're in a large organization, you're probably using instant messaging and that instant messaging is synchronized using cloud-based services. This means that you don't have to be an employee in a particular building on a particular floor. You can have a laptop and effectively work from anywhere in the world. Having different people access different cloud services from different locations brings a bit of complexity when it comes to identifying who that user is and if they have access to those resources. Fortunately, there are services in the cloud that provide identity synchronization. So instead of having a single directory that is stored in your corporate data center, you can instead have multiple directories stored in many places around the world in different cloud environments. For example, you might be using Microsoft Intra ID, Octa, or Google Identity. This also synchronizes any changes across all of those different repositories. So when you make one change to a user's profile, those changes are pushed out to all of those different identity providers. This also means that we don't have to go from identity provider to identity provider just to make sure that we've added a new user or removed somebody from the directory. We can simply add the user in one place and those changes are pushed out to all of those different identity providers. These resources in the cloud have also changed the way that we license the applications. That's because the applications were using may be anywhere on the internet at a cloud provider instead of being installed onto a storage drive on our local laptop. This is why many people have moved this licensing process to the cloud. You don't have to have separate paper licenses or separate physical licensing keys. You can instead centralize the management of all of those license keys on one single management front end. This could also save you money because you can see every license that you own. And if you have certain users that are not currently using that application, you can move those licenses over to a different user instead of purchasing more licenses for the organization. Here's the front end of a cloud-based licensing manager. You can see a number of keys have been created for an application and we can use those license keys and push them out to a specific user who will now be able to have access to that application. If we need to change that assignment, we simply go back to this management front end and make those changes from this cloud-based infrastructure.