This is something that is supposed to take off, which basically puts your data in the hands of a third party, like Google or Microsoft, so that your data is stored with them, and even applications are run from their servers, so that none of the processes or storage needs to necessarily be kept on your local machine.

I have mixed feelings about this.  Storage is not expensive anymore, but being diligent and finding the right software to backup all of the data you need at the right intervals still requires a lot of configuration, no matter how robust and thorough your backup software is.  See my review of BeyondCompare software.