The latest and greatest buzzword nowadays is cloud computing. So you don’t feel left out, let’s have a quick primer on what exactly cloud computing is, shall we?
Firstly, there isn’t a universally agreed upon definition, as many people use the term to talk about a variety of different services and systems. But at its core, cloud computing is computing technology that resides on centralized, off-site servers. These servers do the heavy lifting; they run the applications, store the data, and so on. Client computers utilize this technology over the Internet. If this sounds a lot like a mainframe, you’re absolutely right. Funny how all things seem to come full circle, isn’t it?
Another term you may have heard lately, which has a lot to do with cloud computing, is SaaS – Software as a Service. Essentially, these are hosted applications; software you use on a website. Like Salesforce.com, BaseCamp, Google Apps, and so on. These are not new concepts at all. They’ve been around for several years now. But the buzz is due to the business world’s recent eagerness to take advantage of the, well, advantages that cloud computing and SaaS can offer. Namely, cost and time savings. You pay for use rather than per installation, ensuring that you only pay for what you actually consume. And access to applications can, in theory, be instantaneous. No need to purchase, install, update and register your software.
Instead of setting up, installing costly software, and supporting a large number of client PCs, cloud computing allows you to have simple, “thin client” PCs for your users. The real horsepower is kept on the servers (i.e. in the cloud). Software is installed, upgraded, and supported in one place. Users simply use the software and applications as they need. All the client PC needs to do, at its core, is transfer and receive data over a network or the Internet, and display it to the end user.
Google and Amazon have been working with a cloud computing model since their inception. Cloud computing is basically what websites have been for the past 20 years. A simple request is made by the user to the cloud (i.e. a website), where a centralized server (i.e. the web server) processes the request, doing any required database lookups and calculations, and serving back the results in a small, simplified format. The user only needs a web browser, while the server houses the software for the database, programming language, and so on.
Questions that are raised surrounding cloud computing typically revolve around the reliability of the ‘cloud’, specifically the security and integrity of the stored data, hacker and virus protection, support for the applications and the hardware, privacy, encryption, and so on. That said, cloud computing and SaaS are on their way to mainstream acceptance, so be sure to throw out these buzzwords whenever possible. Makes you sound smart, you know.
