The Idiots Guide to Cloud Computing

Unless you have been living under a rock recently, you have heard of cloud computing. But what is The Cloud? Those of us who are not quite as computer savvy as the rest are left to sit back and wonder; what are we missing out on?

This article from Dummies.com seeks to explain the cloud concept to those individuals who just don’t get it.

Cloud computing is the next evolutionary stage in the technical world. It allows EVERYTHING from computing power to computing infrastructure, applications, and business processes to personal collaboration to be delivered to the user whenever and wherever they need.

I know what you are thinking. What does that mean!?

Well, the Cloud, itself, is a set of hardware, networks, storage, services and interfaces that combine together to provide aspects of computing as a service including: delivery of software, infrastructure and storage over the internet based on user demand.

The Cloud has four essential characteristics:

1. Elasticity and the ability to scale up and down
2. Self-service provisioning and automatic deprovisioning
3. Application programming interfaces (APIs)
4. Billing and metering of service usage in a pay-as-you-go model

The key to the Cloud is its flexibility. That is what is drawing individuals and business to cloud computing. Many companies, like Google and Amazon, already have many of their IT resources in the Cloud, which comes in three different forms: public, private and hybrid.

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