What is Cloud Computing?

I was talking to a friend yesterday about this very topic – he asked me what it was – and then I read a post today on ZDnet that I thought was going to tell me the answer. Here’s the post: What’s Cloud Computing and What’s Not?

However, the post just told me there was a lot of debate about the issue and that a task force was working towards a definitive definition.

Not much use, so I thought I would add to the corpus of articles and definitions by publishing my (Emissary’s) definition of Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing is the technology used for the provision of web-based resources (i.e. storage, compute cycles and bandwidth) for web-based activities (e.g. content delivery) to a third-party without the third-party needing to understand how the resources are provided or needing to worry that there are enough. To use an analogy, the provision of the service of Cloud Computing is like the provision of electricity – it is a utility in the true sense – because the user of the electricity does not worry how it is generated and is able to consume as much or as little as they need for their purposes. Cloud Computing, like electricity, is then billed in accordance with how much is used.

Because this is a relatively new term, it is often applied to everything and anything so that companies can sound like they are at the cutting edge of technology. The most commonly associated utility with Cloud Computing is Software as a Service (SaaS). In general, this is provided on a licensed basis which is usually calculated on a per-user, or per-client basis. While it is a utility, unless it is delivered from a fully-scalable, black-box server infrastructure that meets the definition of Cloud Computing as set out above then it is simply SaaS. Another service commonly associated with the Cloud is virtualisation technology because it provides a black-box service to the end-user. However, unless it scales and provides the flexibility that a true Cloud should, it is simply a means to abstract technology knowledge from the end-user.

The reason that it is easy to blur the line between technology such as SaaS or virtualisation and Cloud Computing is that they originate in the same place – on a server somewhere out there on the Internet. By the same token that a kettle or toaster are not simply called “electricity” we should be clear that a program (e.g. website or virtualisation tool) running on a server infrastructure is not Cloud Computing, but may use it.

For further reading, please read my previous article Cloud Computing vs Dedicated Servers.

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