What is Cloud Computing? Get Simple Answers & Explanations You Can Understand

You've probably heard someone talk about "Cloud Computing" and asked yourself, "What the heck is cloud computing? What does it mean?". Does it mean you're on a plane using your computer in the clouds? Nope it really isn't a hard concept to understand and isn't new either. We were talking about this 10 years ago at Oracle's Open World in LA. The simple answer is cloud computing gives a user the ability to access storage and bandwidth so it becomes more like a utility so you get computing "power" when you need it and you pay for what you use, similar to what you do with your utility company. But in this instance, a company only pays for the bandwidth and server space they use to serve their content to their customers and they don't have the overhead. So instead of having a server in a data center rack with a high amount of overhead you are sharing the 'cloud' of computing servers, storage, and bandwidth. As said, it is the equivalent to a internet application hosting utility. Note, it isn't for everyone, there are still some issues but it is starting to become more practical and something you should educate yourself about because although it may not be a solution for everyone, it is the wave of the future. And a great place to begin is by watching the collection of YouTube videos I've posted then if you still need more information use the links at the bottom of the article.

The Video includes Tim O'Reilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg, Jay Cross, Brian Solis, Kevin Marks, Steve Gillmor, Jeremy Tanner, Maggie Fox, Tom McGovern, Sam Lawrence, Stowe Boyd, David Tebbutt, Dave McClure, Chris Carfi, Vamshi Krishna and Rod Boothby the same question: "What is Cloud Computing?".

Here's a few more videos

Read more about cloud computing

• Cloud is an operations model, not technology
• Down To Business: Customers Fire A Few Shots At Cloud Computing
• Computer in the Cloud
• Google, Apple and the future of personal computing
• Wired Weighs In: The Information Factories
• Buisiness Week: Computing Heads for the Clouds
• What is cloud computing?
• How Stuff Works

• Thinking About Moving Your Hosting to the Cloud? Check out this article by Kevin Fogarty who has done it!