Everyone talks about
it, but what is "cloud
computing"?
BY LAWRENCE S. GOULD / Contributing Editor
Imagine outsourcing the company's management information
systems (MIS) department—hardware, software applications,
database management, and support staff. What would that look
like? It'd look like cloud computing.
Cloud computing (also called "the cloud") is an enormous
collection of computer technologies that give people access to
practically unlimited amounts of computer processing, data
storage, communications and software programs. "Cloud" is
just a stand-in for "Internet." Data is stored remotely, not locally.
Cloud computing is a reminder of how computing used to be:
A mainframe computer in a datacenter sequestered somewhere
on- or off-site, and access to that mainframe—access to data and
to running programs—through a simple, if not "dumb," terminal.
Now the datacenter is "on the cloud" and the terminal is any
computer device that can run a browser. Moreover, as with time-
share computing back in the 1960s and 1970s, cloud computing is
billed similarly to paying for electricity at home.
A WELL-DEFINED CLOUD
"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—
servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and
What's "Cloud
Computing"?
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