Ask HN: What does "the Cloud" mean to you?

(Disclaimer: I work at Salesforce)<p>We at SFDC hear a lot about offers to businesses of "your own private cloud", which is essentially marketing jargon for something very un-cloud-like: running software locally, on your own servers, while you're completely responsible for the entire operation. It's a grossly disingenuous hijacking of the "cloud" terminology that I've found promotes confusion.<p>Most of the other responses here would match my own definition of the cloud: software, offered as a service, where all the underpinnings (data center management, software updates, redundancies, reliability) are abstracted away from you. The key is that you only need two things to access a cloud resource:<p><pre><code> A web browser, preferably != IE6 An internet connection </code></pre> When I explain the cloud to people who don't read HN, I usually make a comparison to Gmail and MS Office. You access Gmail through your web browser, and there's no local software to download. When Google releases a new feature or a bugfix or a security patch, there's no action required on your end. You're simply up to date the next time you connect.<p>Contrast that with MS Office, which comes on a CD/DVD, requires a local install process, and needs to be constantly patched for features and security. All of the work to maintain that software falls to you, the end user.

The use of the term "the Cloud" is basically for anything that's not the traditional way of requesting and utilizing IT resources (aka rigid, pre-allocated, persistent and more than likely tied to physical systems). And that's probably why you're seeing so many different definitions.<p>What I think "cloud" should mean is the combining of individual resources (computing, storage, etc.) into a large virtual pool that can be accessed and allocated dynamically. This can be done within a corporation's own set of servers and devices (private cloud) or by tapping into someone else's collection of resources (public cloud providers like Amazon, Azure, etc.).

To me, a cloud is a distributed system of computing resources where the resources can be dynamically allocated with an API. A hosted application should be able to increase or decrease the available processors, memory, and disk without human intervention. Human oversight should be implemented at points where it makes sense for business and security, rather than at points dictated by the limitations of technology. This means a cloud should do be able to do significant automated management of DNS, networking, and provisioning of fundamental operating system details.<p>The line between any classic distributed system or cluster and a 'cloud' is blurry, but generally speaking a cloud's API should be internet-compatible and capable of using commodity hardware to scale up with minimal (and preferably asynchronous) intervention from system administrators.<p>As for 'The Cloud' -- currently I don't think there is 'The Cloud' the way there is 'The World Wide Web', but it's theoretically possible. Right now 'The Cloud' generally means 'A Public Cloud', which is a publicly available distributed system like the one I described above. A Virtual Private Hosting service is not a cloud, because allocation of resources typically involves a sales contract of some sort. But the service itself it might theoretically run on a cloud, and you can build a cloud out of VPSs.

If my mum starting using The Cloud in sentences she would mean "The Internet", she doesn't have the concept of a server, and doesn't really need to, she just knows it's "Out there somewhere".<p>I think it would be unlikely for one of my peers (mostly developers) to mention "The Cloud" unless they were trying to be intensionally buzzwordy for comedy effect. They would be more specific.<p>I/We would however say:<p><pre><code> a cloud to mean clusters machines (probably split into VPSs) xxxx's cloud to mean xxxx's server infrastructure/platform </code></pre> I like The Cloud as a common term to mean "Stored/Processed out there in the internet somewhere", not as a well defined technical term.

For me, it is the idea of outsourcing infrastructure and treating computers as a utility.

Computers I can't see and don't own. Suspiciously similar to a botnet.<p>Actually I'm less paranoid about it than that, but only slightly.

"The cloud means replacing your ops team with a clip-art picture of a cloud--PROBLEM SOLVED." --Coda Hale

IMO, cloud service is any service that a) scalable on demand, b)has ~100% uptime, c) require no maintenance from customer. It doesn't matter whether it is one server or 10000 servers - if it fits this model of consumption - it's cloud.

Whenever someone asks me what I think of cloud computing, I just reply with this video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o</a>

For me personally, I'd largely agree with your first definition - but I would expand it to services run on "private clouds" (ie, a corporate having a couple hundred virtual machines on a rack full of blades I would consider "cloud based").<p>However, if I look at our customers (techies and enthusiasts who build their own computers), they define a cloud based service as anything primarily online - IE, your second definition. I think this definition is gaining ground.

I don't think of the cloud as just a server elsewhere on the internet, but more of a group of servers, like EC2, or Windows Azure, where the data is shared between them, and backed up in various places.<p>I have heard many people refer to the internet in general as 'the cloud', which I can understand, but I don't think of that as it's primary definition.

Optimist: Decentralized infrastructure that powers 21st century commerce and acts as an infinite storage space for personal files.<p>Pessimist: Data Star (Earth's version of the Death Star) that will just become another way for more ads to find us where ever we go in space and in time...

Most people couldn't put their finger on exactly what Cloud is, but they don't realize they fail because they don't understand the True Nature of Cloud.<p>A cloud is not Azure. It is not AWS. It is not Rackspace.<p>A cloud is not definable by what it is, but by what it is not.<p>Asking for a definition of a cloud, is like asking for the definitive IP Address of www.amazon.com.<p>A cloud is a hand-wavy indirection, and abstraction of a compute or storage infrastructure.<p>Each of the products you mentioned are not Cloud. They are manifestations of a cloud. But they are not the Cloud, as they are no longer abstract.

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets of water or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. (c) wikipedia.

To me it means not being in control of my own data.

Outsourced data center on a pay-per-use basis.

I think of it, at least this week, as:<p><pre><code> resilient Internet services with persistence</code></pre>

To me, the cloud means trusting the base performance and uptime of my application to someone else.

The (generally) light fluffy things in the air that produce rain.

There are already 33 comments here, and not a lot of agreement. "The Cloud" just seems to me to be more marketing sucker-bait, basically (Web 2.0)2.0, I wonder what they are going to call ((Web 2.0)2.0)2.0?

to me it means: computing power behind an api.<p>so my scripts can manage the data center (by growing/shrinking resource usage)

Seriously, after all these years aren't we past this repetitive question?

I think it came from one of those network diagrams where you have :<p>local server &#60;&#62; picture of a cloud &#60;&#62; remote user<p>I now have to deal with management types who have read too many magazines wanting their data stored "in the cloud".<p>The management of the company I share an office with is seriously thinking about moving all their email "into the cloud" because the person that was responsible for backup did it wrong and they lost some important emails. They now associate "in the cloud" with "reliable". They are paying for an expensive consultant to come in and tell them what to do.

&#62; many people say they are in "the Cloud" where they define the cloud as a server on the internet.<p>To me, cloud would mean that the service has very good reliability, which your run of the mill "server on the internet" does not necessarily have.