What is Cloud?

Defining a nebulous term

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I have run across a number of interesting definitions of cloud over the years and just recently read one again which prompted me to write this post. It’s just a random blog due to reading something that triggered these thoughts. Although I put most of this in my book at the bottom of my post and in my classes, I decided to make this public to help people understand what cloud is — based on where it originates — for anyone new to the topic.

The evolution of “Cloud”

Cloud is many things to many people. Some people say cloud is “somebody else’s server.” I do not share that view and it will be evident why through the stories I tell you below. NIST has a definition of cloud computing that is pretty close to my own, but not exactly. That definition is too narrow in some scenarios and does not align exactly to all cloud providers.

I would like to offer my own definition of cloud, presented through personal stories and observations in telecom, server and application hosting, and software…