Many of my colleagues ask me about Cloud Computing and the number one question is, “What is it?”  Most people who follow Cloud news have heard this all before, but here’s the short of it:

Cloud Computing means one or more of the following:

1. Software as a Service (SaaS)
   • Any software you “rent” and access online
   • You have been using this for years: Gmail, Quickbase, Salesforce, Yahoo Mail, MobileMe, etc
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
   • A set of programming resources accessible online that allow you to create and publish your own SaaS
   • Ex: Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, Amazon SimpleDB
3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
   • Server environments (servers, OS, firewalls, load balancers, disk storage, etc) that you can “rent” and access online
   • Ex: Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Microsoft Azure, Mosso Cloud Server, Amazon S3

The underlying theme of all Cloud services is that they are:

1. Inexpensive (relatively)
2. Always accessible via the Internet
3. Scalable
4. Consumable in increments, as opposed to owning “the whole thing”
5. Care and feeding is shifted to the service provider

Any of this sound good to you?  It should.  The Cloud is a compelling offering - no matter what form it takes.