A couple of years back I was on a trip to Spain. During the taxi to the runway in Frankfurt, our aircraft was diverted to a parking position to get a technical problem fixed. So I grabbed my book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and started to read from where I had left the day before. Horcrux by horcrux gets discovered and distroyed, the final duel is about to start when I notice that everybody around me is leaving the aircraft. I had to reconfirm with a look outside, but to my surprise we already arrived in Madrid. Without noticing I had been in and out the clouds, with some "magic" been taken from Germany to Spain.
A similar experience is possible today when using IT services. Usually you don't notice what is going on in the background. Web pages and their components, data and scripts, all could come from a "local" server or from "the cloud". In my recent post I showed how to sign up for DB2 with BLU Acceleration in the cloud and how to catalog a cloud-hosted database locally. Once the database is known locally, you can use the DB2 CLP, db2batch, and your favorite scripts to work with the database, even though it is located "somewhere".
But why would I use an analytics database in the cloud instead of locally? In his post "Cloud is the New Normal" Adam Ronthal answers this and also shares what other services were run locally before, like email or VoIP servers. If you are interested, but have questions about data security in the cloud, the Walid Rjaibi's series on "Data Security in the Cloud" (link is to part 6 with links to other parts provided on that page) is a good read.
That's enough for today. Looking up, I notice that most of my train ride is done. Time for the hotel and some sleep...