Page 24 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

Defining the Cloud

There are many definitions of the cloud—too many for any
one to have achieved a rigorous meaning. It’s most specifi-
cally described as software as a service, where a software ap-
plication can be accessed online, as in Salesforce.com, Google

Apps, or Zoho. It also takes the form of infrastructure as a
service, where a user goes to a site such as Amazon Web Serv-
ices’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and rents time on a server.
It also takes the form of platform as a service, where certain
tools are made available with which to build software to run
in the host cloud. These descriptors are common currency in
technology circles and have been defined by a government

agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
They have currency, but I don’t put much stock in them. I
think they are temporary snapshots of a rapidly shifting for-
mation.
Nevertheless, the marketers have heard the buzz, and
suddenly they want to describe what they’re doing as part of
the cloud. “Cloud Computing: Real Approach or Buzzword
Bingo?” asked the headline in an electronic newsletter cross-
ing my screen recently.

So it’s possible today that when the CEO asks his technical
staff what’s all this he’s hearing about the cloud, the IT direc-
tors and Web site managers will start describing its parts, then
argue over what’s required in the cloud, disagreeing immedi-
ately and sometimes vigorously. The corporate IT staff knows
the cloud when it sees it; it just can’t tell you what it is.

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