Wikipedia’s Cloud Computing site discusses it like this:

“Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. The concept incorporates infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0”  (link )

Some other informative links include:

1. Tim O’Reilly’s article on Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing
2. Information Week’s  Guide To Cloud Computing

Four reasons why I think that cloud computing is the next step in information technology (IT) is:

1. Data Backup .  Backup data via the cloud is vastly superior to local methods.  Any person who relies on computers and digital information long enough will experience the pain of a loss of data.  These come in the form of hard drive crashes, information corruption, or simple user error.  Who hasn’t accidentally deleted an important file?  In the cloud, you can enable multiple data backup sets that are geographically separate and thus secure from your physical location.  The fact that this can all be automated makes the cloud the ultimate solution for backing up data.
2. Synchronization .  I have owned nearly every device that has been capable of “synchronizing” my contacts lists – Palm Pilots, Windows Mobile devices, Apple Macs, Blackberries.  I can tell you from personal experience that eventually every one of these attempts to effortlessly allow multiple accesses to the same data set with the ability to resolve discrepancies do not work.  Worse, they all eventually end up corrupting the data itself either by messing up the content or literally scrambling bits.  The solution is to have a single data set, up in the cloud, that you can access anywhere, edit anytime, and use from any application.
3. Aligns reliability investments with data value .  If you have intellectual capital in the form of digital data you consider it priceless because its future revenue potential is limitless.  If you have that stored locally, you must investment in archiving and backup resources.  It is doubtful that you will choose to afford the level, breadth, and quality of tools that you really need to do this right.  It’s just too expensive.  That same money, though, invested in a cloud services can be leveraged to great advantage to buy best of class reliability, capacity, and ease of use appropriate to your needs.
4. Supports platform independence. Today, most of us live in our browsers.  If you use Firefox, you can have the exact same web experience on Linux, any flavor of Windows, and Macs alike.  Unfortunately, your underlying operating system still, to a great extent, dictates your file system and thus data format.  While most file systems are readable by most modern operating systems, all operating systems can access remote, cloud storage without any concern for format.  Your data on the cloud is platform independent.  That also means that it is backwards and forwards compatible by definition.

Now there is one other HUGE reason why cloud computing is our collective future:  Google and the balance of information power. But, that will be our topic for the second part in this series.

Cloud computing solves the problems of platform-centric file systems, backup complexity, archiving expense, and data availability.  As we march along the progress trail from mainframes, to personal computing, to make the next leap to truly mobile computing, we need to accept that cloud computing is better, inevitable, and should be welcomed by Information Professionals everywhere.

So do you agree with me that cloud computing is inevitable?

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 8, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .

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