Watching the Cloud Bustle During the Pandemic

During the pandemic, countries issued quarantine orders one after another. After people were deprived of the ability to go out, work and life began to rely more on cloud computing technology. Last year, many people kept asking me, what is cloud? This year, even elementary school students started raising national flags in the cloud. Cloud computing technology has rapidly penetrated people's hearts. At this point, if someone asks what cloud is again, many people would probably look at them in surprise, thinking they came from another planet. During the pandemic, more and more stories happened in the cloud - choirs, ballet... The cloud was busy and bustling. Now that the pandemic has downgraded, let's look at those bustling things that happened and are happening.

Bustle One: Busy E-commerce

Seven daily necessities: firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea. During the lockdown, obtaining food and supplies became more difficult. E-commerce took on the responsibility well, ensuring everyone's daily material needs. During this period, almost all online retailers relied on the cloud to operate, especially when facing transaction surges.

Stores still using traditional web hosting might experience downtime due to exhausted network resources unable to handle large amounts of traffic. Cloud hosting solutions are highly scalable, so sudden traffic growth is less likely to interrupt business.

Additionally, cloud vendors have more capability and experience in handling network attacks. Compared to organizations running on-premises servers, they can better protect servers from DDoS, hackers, and other threats. Therefore, more e-commerce sites migrated their business to the cloud. Public cloud solutions helped e-commerce merchants minimize downtime from network attacks, ensured business operations, and took on everyone's daily necessities well.

Bustle Two: Supporting Health Services

Beyond basic life needs, the biggest thing during the pandemic was fighting the virus. Of course, we're not talking about hundreds of thousands of people watching the construction of temporary hospitals. It's said that during the pandemic, from the perspective of cloud business usage, the healthcare industry surpassed finance, energy, and utilities to become the leader.

Many hospitals, medical institutions, and government health services have digitized and brought their data to the cloud to optimize services and maximize patient outcomes.

During the pandemic, cloud computing demonstrated huge advantages in fighting COVID-19. Early on, cloud computing wasn't just about data storage, but effectively enhanced data analysis capabilities. Additionally, its excellent qualities of no training needed, no equipment procurement, no IT staff, and no corresponding hardware space helped medical institutions effectively reduce IT costs, putting more resources into big things like vaccine research.

If you observe carefully, you can see that online video conferences among global medical experts are very frequent, and the cloud has become the main tool for global joint pandemic response. Meanwhile, more hospitals started providing telemedicine. Accessible remote data and online tools provided doctors with the necessary conditions for remote work. As people strive to avoid personal interaction with others, telemedicine has become increasingly useful. It's very useful for diagnosing certain types of conditions and handling medical claims.

Bustle Three: Remote Work

As someone living paycheck to paycheck, the pandemic brought not just the threat of illness, but also the threat of unemployment. Here I want to thank cloud computing technology again! It allowed us to work remotely, provide various services for remote projects, and conduct various teaching and training. It helped many people keep their jobs!

During the pandemic, almost all remote work and remote meeting software vendors used cloud computing technology to provide free and convenient access services. These remote work tools all rely on cloud computing technology for continuous and reliable operation. For example, during the pandemic, Zoom relied on cloud computing technology support to emerge suddenly and become the most popular video conferencing platform sweeping across global media networks.

Actually, remote work existed before the rise of cloud computing, but was difficult to implement due to low efficiency and technical challenges. After cloud computing technology solved the multi-client collaborative work problem, it effectively avoided issues like data inconsistency, making remote work a beautiful scene during this period.

Bustle Four: Diversified Online Entertainment

Quarantine not only made food supply difficult, but long periods of isolation could also cause mental health damage. Fortunately, the gadget and internet era provided multiple options for home entertainment without requiring personal interaction with others.

Xu Zheng's "Lost in Russia" switched from offline to online free viewing for the first time, opening the curtain on online entertainment during the pandemic, and ByteDance also came into everyone's view. After that, domestic video sites like Youku, Tencent, iQIYI, and various live streaming sites all showed their capabilities, making online media bustling. Foreign streaming service providers like Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others also provided rich lists of movies and TV series for binge-watching. For video game enthusiasts, online gaming on mobile devices or consoles might be a viable pastime. On the other hand, during mandatory quarantine, social media activity changed dramatically. Many people started making video blogs on short video sites like TikTok to entertain people, inspire others, and make money.

All these entertainment activities enabled people to have fun and connect with others online in some form, solving boredom and preventing more serious problems. Cloud computing made them possible. Without cloud computing technology, sites and web services would struggle to handle traffic surges, leading to downtime and making users more frustrated.

Imagine a world without cloud computing - even if we wouldn't collapse, we would fall into inefficiency and unsustainable living. Cloud computing's stability and flexibility characteristics ensure websites don't crash due to suddenly increased workers and entertainment seekers, allowing us to continue doing business, treating illnesses, shopping, and entertaining online, so life can continue. Cloud computing has become a necessity in everyone's lives. To put it bluntly, the pandemic helped cloud computing technology establish its unshakable position.