What is cloud computing?

I should start off by saying that cloud computing is an industry, not a product. Therefore, there are many, many, many explanations to answer this question as there are many, many, many ‘flavours’ of cloud computing.

Gmail, hotmail and web hosting… All cloud computing

But broadly speaking, cloud computing is simply the delivery of computing services through the internet. So your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a cloud computing provider. As is Hotmail, Gmail and your web host. And if you use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), that’s cloud computing too.

In other words, it’s nothing new; we’ve been doing for years!

So what’s all the hype about?

For me, the concept of cloud computing is simply:

the ability to access as many computing resources you need, from anywhere on any internet connected device, on a pay per use basis.

It’s the change from buying IT as a product to buying it as a service.

Cloud computing is like the electricity grid

In fact, the electricity grid is great analogy to cloud computing. Confused? – Bear with me…

We all know we can access electricity from the power station from anywhere, anytime from any electrical device as long as we are connected to a power point. We can access as much or as little as we want, and we only pay for what we use. Cloud computing works using the same priciple.

To really hit home what all the hype is about, we need to compare cloud computing to traditional computing, using the electricity grid analogy.

Imagine if you couldn’t plug your phone charger in at the hotel

Imagine this…Your phone charger, laptop or any electrical device in your office only accepts electricity from your office and nowhere else! Yes! Your charger, your laptop, your projector even your toaster in the office are only compatible with the electricity in your office.

So you take your phone charger with you on a business trip and as soon as you plug it in the hotel room’s power point it stalls – it’s useless – because it can’t reach your office to get your office’s electricity.

Pay-per-use doesn’t exist in traditional computing

And pay for what you use? Well that’s really non-existent in the traditional computing sense. You generally pay for your own servers and computing resources up-front, so you’re paying for capacity you may not even use in the future.

But if using cloud computing, like the electricity grid, if you have a party at your office and need more power to accommodate the lights, the stereo, the bar, the band etc, you just switch it on and you only pay for your usage that night!

Conclusion: Cloud computing is just a new name

Obviously, I’m passionate about the cloud computing industry. It’s hard not to be. It’s flexible, adaptable, scalable and more sustainable to better suit the needs of your business.

It’s called cloud computing for now, but at its current rate of evolution it’ll be back to being called the same ole ‘IT industry’ soon enough.