The practice of cloud computing is here to stay.
Like it or not, you will be storing or accessing items in ‘the cloud’ for many years to come.

Already, the term ‘the cloud’ is not completly accurate, as there are now many different ‘clouds’ out there.
Think of it as a ‘Cloudscape’, if you will.
It is made of some very large cloud locations, such as the Amazon cloud, Microsoft cloud, the Sony PSN cloud and the Google cloud. Of course, there are many other smaller clouds as well. (Geez – I am sick of writing the word cloud already).

This shared cyberspace is already very splintered, so it is best to think of it in terms of what these different clouds offer, from a service point of view. It breaks down into 5 basic  “cloud services” markets.

These are:

– web-based services (eg: Google & Flickr)
– software-as-a-service (SAAS) offerings (eg: Box.net & Microsoft Exchange online)
– app-components-as-a-service  (eg: Google APIs & MSalesforce App Exchange)
– software-platform-as-a-service (eg: salesforce.com & Netsuite)
– virtual-infrastructure-as-a-service (eg: Akami)

For many, this all means pretty much nothing and the bottom line here is that pretty much every man & his dog is in the cloud now.
So, you need to unclench and just embrace it.

You should even start to learn some of the cloud computing terminology that comes with the territory.
Then, when people discuss it with you, you won’t seem to be in such of a fog.