In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been used in many important areas, including weather forecasting, security, environmental monitoring, health care, and industry. However, the constraints of WSNs are in terms of energy, processing, connectivity, computation, and data integrity. The efficient administration of the enormous volumes of data generated by WSNs is a key concern in this study area. As a result, robust and scalable high-performance computing and storage infrastructures are} absolutely necessary for the processing and storing of WSN data in real-time. Combining WSNs and cloud computing to create sensor clouds can address this issue. In this article, we investigate, highlight, and report {data collection techniques, aiming to highlight the significance of sensor clouds. In this context, a comprehensive overview of WSNs and sensor cloud platforms are also provided. This article covers their definitions, architectures, and applications by categorizing and classifying data collection methods in WSNs and sensor clouds. Key research challenges for future work and use cases in this research domain are also discussed.