Ask Nick: What is Cloud Computing?
It's hard to go anywhere these days without bumping into the phrase "Cloud Computing," and, like so many industry buzzwords, it means many different things to many different vendors. We'll tackle some of the more common uses of the phrase, and see how (and if!) they apply to you.
The Boring Definition
"Cloud computing" can be defined as "the practice of using a remote server or a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than using a local server or a personal computer to do the same things." So, as you can see, if you do any part of your average computing day - storing, managing, processing data - on the Internet, you're doing cloud computing!
But I know you're interested in a slighly less pedantic, definitely less geeky way of describing "cloud computing," so let's break that term into more manageable chunks.
The Categories
We'll be breaking "cloud computing" into these categories:
So just click on a link above, and you can read up on what Cloud Computing is, why people are so nuts about it right now, and maybe even how it might be useful to you, whether you're an individual, a small or medium business, or even a large enterprise (or just hoping to be one soon!).
Please note that each section also has news!
|
|
