Over the last six months I have had to struggle with having to educate or rather re-educate our clients. Many if not most are confused by the term Cloud and Cloud Computing. For small clients it is real easy. Cloud just means on the web but to large enterprises Cloud and Cloud Computing means something entirely different.
Everyone wants a seat on the Cloud Computing bandwagon. Software developers and SaaS vendors are popping up all over the place claiming they provide Cloud Computing services.
We are being flooded with self-serving claims from a widening array of vendors that are trying to redefine the meaning of cloud computing to suit their proprietary interests. Jeffrey M. Kaplan Information Week
The term Cloud Computing has been used so much and in so many different context that the actual meaning has been lost. The term should be re coined "Fog Computing" in my opinion.
I have seen so many mixed uses of the term Cloud Computing and the Cloud that I no longer use either term. For example, the Penn State University Web 2.0 Glossary states the following:
Cloud Computing - The use of a Web services such as Flickr, Google Docs, Jing to perform the functions that were traditionally done with software installed on an individual computer. Penn State Web2.0 Glossary
Wow, is this really muddying the waters. This definition is misleading. These are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products not Cloud Computing products.
Consumers of Cloud Computing consume resources (computing power, memory, disk space, additional CPUs) as a service and pay only for what they use. In the legal industry we license seats not computing resources. Cloud Computing employs a utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (your electric company) are consumed. The confusion lies in consumer's use and billing. Unlike your electic company, your legal software vender does not adjust your monthly payment when the software isn't in use or if your usage goes up or down. True you can add more seats or reduce the number of seats but that is the only similarity to the utility computing model.
If you purchase seat licenses from a online service provider and don't use all its features you are not charged less. If you purchase 3 seats and only one staff member uses the program everyday you are still charged the same every month. If you require more or less computing power you will be charged the same every month. However, the SaaS vendor is only charged for resources (computing power) actually being used, not the legal software consumer.
This will keep our clients out of the Fog.
Here is an excellent read on technology
The good enough revolution
"We've seen it again and again. Consider, for example, the rise of cloud computing. For years, software was something you bought and installed on your hard drive. A lot of it was made by Microsoft, which solidified its dominance by releasing ever more powerful, feature-laden updates. But with the advent of services like Gmail and Zoho Writer, many users are now turning to the Web for basic tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, and email. These cloud apps have inherent limits: They run through a browser window and can't directly access your local hard drive or processor. They lack features. Their performance depends on the strength of your Internet connection. Nevertheless, tens of millions of people use Gmail, while Zoho Writer boasts 1.8 million users and is growing at a rate of 100,000 subscribers a month. Microsoft, of course, is now jumping into the cloud as fast as it can. Redmond says that Office 2010 will be largely cloud-based. Not to be outdone, Google recently announced a mostly cloud-based operating system that will work in tandem with the company's Chrome browser."