Are you in the Cloud?

Even though there have been a million articles written about this subject over the past few years I still come across many people who ask me what Cloud Computing is? I decided to write this article to try and help you have a better understanding of what Cloud Computing means and how you utilize it. First lets start with a little history factoid, the term "Cloud" was actually taken from telecommunication companies in the 90's to describe how networks communicated. During the start of the Internet era the "Cloud" was what It Professionals used to describe the Internet. Now let's break it down Cloud = Internet and Computing well that's self explanatory, so when you hear the term Cloud Computing in layman's terms they are talking about working or computing on the Internet. So why not just say Internet Computing? Well because even though Cloud Computing is done on the Internet there are different types of Clouds. Hold on before I get that blank dog expression as you start to rotate your head counter clockwise let me explain. There are different types of Clouds right now categorized as either Public Clouds such as Amazon's EC2 which is hosted and managed by a third party vendor and then there are Private Clouds who are corporations that build and manage their own Cloud for a select group to have access to their internal systems via the Internet or VPN, (Virtual Private Network) Application.

Now that you now know the two groups, lets examine each a little more so that you have a better understanding. Like I said previously a Public Cloud is one that is hosted online for the end user to use, a perfect example of a public cloud would be facebook.com. I know I am going to have people tell me that facebook is not an example of cloud computing but in actuality it's one of the best examples and here is how. Facebook is a website that allows you to connect to it from the Internet, it is hosted and managed by Facebook's Data Center, it is SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certified and most importantly it allows you to share and collaborate with other users on their site, hence that is what cloud computing is in a nutshell. Another perfect example would be your GMail or Hotmail web based email account, a web based email system that hosts and manages your email over a SSL connection. As you see all the previously mentioned can be accessed from the Internet and all are examples of public clouds that allow you to function and communicate with others from any Internet ready device that has a compatible browser. This type of cloud computing is the most common and both businesses and personal users take advantage of this on a daily basis.

Private Clouds take the same approach except with at times implementing an extra level of security. This can be done by installing an application on a specific computer so that it may communicate with a firewall appliance before granting access to a companies internal network. Private Clouds are hosted and maintained by the companies internal IT Department and grant or restrict access to certain sections of their internal network. Now I'm trying to keep this as simplified as possible so that you have a better understanding about Cloud computing as a general topic. You can go in depth about Cloud Computing and talk about Hybrid Clouds and Community Clouds but I think I will save those for a different post. For now learning and understanding the basics behind Cloud Computing and the two main types of Clouds will help you have a better understanding as this term is only going to become more prevalent as corporations try and figure out better ways to utilize the internet to cross collaborate no matter where they are located.