Naming conventions for cloud storage prioritize global uniqueness and URI compliance to enable universal access. Unlike local storage constrained by operating system rules (like prohibited characters or case sensitivity variations), cloud object names must often avoid spaces and special characters to function within web addresses. For example, Amazon S3 bucket names must be globally unique and DNS-compliant, while Azure Blob Storage containers enforce lowercase naming.

In practice, cloud platforms like AWS S3 require bucket names formatted as subdomains (e.g., my-company-reports-2024.s3.amazonaws.com), object keys resemble paths (invoices/Q1/invoice_123.pdf) but use slashes conceptually. Local storage follows OS-specific rules: Windows restricts * ? : " < > | in filenames within C:\Users\Name\Documents\, while Linux systems treat /home/user/file.txt and /home/user/File.TXT as distinct files.

Cloud conventions enable global accessibility via URLs but restrict special character use and require careful planning for uniqueness. Local naming offers simplicity for single machines but becomes cumbersome scaling across systems due to OS inconsistencies. Future-proofing requires adhering to cloud URI standards while considering hybrid environments, where interoperability hinges on avoiding OS-specific characters universally.