What is the ‘Cloud’?
Cloud computing is a recently coined but popular term for the delivery of information and services to one’s computer, over the internet (or ‘cloud’). Why ‘cloud’? Well, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing network diagrams you’d know that the internet is generally depicted by a cloud. My guess is that the Internet has become such a vast, unfathomable network of information and services that no one can really explain it – so we just call it ‘the cloud’ and take for granted all the really clever, interesting and weird stuff that happens in there.
Personally I’m not sure that l like the term, I run a business and the image of my information floating around in some vast cloud makes me a little uneasy, fortunately I know better and if it’s the term that’s going to stick then I need to join the party. Whether it will stick is another matter, the most recent fad was calling it web 2.0 and the slightly less catchy software as a service (or SaaS), not to mention on demand services and application service provision (ASP). But all these terms essentially refer to same thing; the delivery of services and information over the internet to billions of consumers and millions of businesses all over the world.
