The ‘Cloud’ – the web’s buzzword du jour – has become one of the most misunderstood and misapplied terms of today’s internet. Technology companies are tacking the word ‘cloud’ to their web services like there was no tomorrow, but does it really matter? Would you even know if the services they’re selling are actually ‘in the cloud’ anyway?

What cloud computing is – and isn’t.

Cloud computing is all about the underlying infrastructure – the servers, networks, datacenters, and virtualisation technology that creates a scalable platform for web services to run on. It’s that simple. Of course, many web services will run on a cloud, but they’re not the cloud, and they’re not cloud computing! When you turn your lights on at home, you’ll be using electricity, but you wouldn’t say you were using ‘nuclear power’ even though that’s probably where your electricity originated. In the same way, when we’re using Google Docs we’re just using a web application, not cloud computing, even though that’s what underpins it.

Enough already!

I’m going to suggest something radical here. I don’t think that end-users should be talking about cloud computing at all. The problem is we’ve let the end-users define our industry vocabulary. People have been talking about “moving their business into the cloud” for a while now. Of course we know what they’re talking about – they’re just switching from desktop applications to web services (which for a lot of businesses makes complete sense). But using Gmail, Google Docs, or DropBox isn’t actually cloud computing. Surely it’s time for someone to clarify this to their customers?

What is it good for?

Businesses are moving to cloud-powered web services for a very good reason. They save money. They’re perfect for a number of tasks – like off-site backups or collaborative writing. Apart from potential security issues (the internet is far from hacker-proof yet), and data recovery considerations (if the service fails/closes, is your data saved elsewhere?), they can be great for business. But… they’re just web apps.

Other reading.

For a more complete, geek-oriented viewpoint, have a read of technology entrepreneur Kate Craig-Wood’s blog at www.katescomment.com.