What is Cloud computing? [closed]

Question

Could anybody explain in plain words how Cloud computing works? I have read the Wikipedia article, but still not sure that I understand how cloud actually works.

Answer 1

I think it is just like a computer which is having services offering from clouds instead of server systems. Clouds may spread along world wide. So clouds only can distribute the services much faster when compares it to any other.

Answer 2

Even something simple such as webmail can be considered to hold our information "in the cloud". That is to say that the data isn't held locally, it's stored on that magical cloud thing called the internet.

It's basically just a buzzword for storing stuff remotely. This list summarises why it's used.

FTP backup => Storing files in the cloud
SSHing into a remote PC to execute code => Cloud computing
Webmail => Cloud mail
SSHing into a remote PC to execute code that predicts the weather => Cloud computing via Cloud computing

(I tried an html table but it didn't render...)

Sounds cooler doesn't it!

Answer 3

I'll explain how I've come to understand cloud computing using a couple examples:

Let's say you are creating a personal finances web application. You contact several banks with your proposal and they like the idea but they refuse to allow you access to their servers for a Web Service. In cloud computing, the banks could create a web service in a cloud service like Microsoft's Azure that would extract the data from their server. You would then call their web service from the cloud not their servers. Basically the "cloud" in an intermediary server run by a reputable company like Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc.

On the other hand for the bank it lessens the responsibility and cost of managing the web services and hardware/software required. If a small credit union has only data storage servers and no web server the cloud affords them the same opportunity to participate in your application as a large bank could.

So basically you can imagine the cloud as an intermediary of web services and/or data storage.

Answer 4

Basically the marketing term of the hour. Ask 5 people and you'll get 6 answers. I've heard some people describe cloud computing as Google Docs because you store your data "in the cloud". Others think of it more as dynamic allocation and hosting, such as Amazon's EC2 or Google App Engine.

Answer 5

Cloud computing is a type of shared computing where one utilizes large-scale computing infrastructure. In other words, powerful hardware is interlinked, often to fully realize the benefits of virtualization. This hardware can be shared among many users in the form of a public cloud or dedicated to one entity as it is used in private cloud computing.

The public cloud is defined as a multi-tenant environment, where you buy a “server slice” in a cloud computing environment that is shared with a number of other clients or tenants.

Private cloud computing, on the other hand, by definition is a single-tenant environment where the hardware, storage and network are dedicated to a single client or company.

Answer 6

I like this video's explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0&feature=related

The short version: Google and Salesforce.com, among others, sell computer space and 'virtualized' application environments that let you run your program on their machines. Like virtual webhosting, but for programs and applications, not just websites. It's a big buzzword now because the big players are really pushing it as a way to make more money off of their infrastructures and unused clock cycles. Salesforce especially, you can kind of blame this most recent version of 'cloud computing' on them and 'Force.com', since they've been very heavily marketing their service using the term cloud computing, and by proxy, the idea of cloud computing itself.