What We Talk About When We Talk About Cloud

From now on, I’m going to use the word “cloud” on its own, with no modifiers, to talk about this whole movement/‌technology/‌trend/‌model/‌thingie. I’m not going to call it “cloud computing” because — as friends of mine in Dell’s PowerVault and AppAssure businesses like to remind me — this downplays the very important data side of information technology.

And I’m going to avoid saying “the cloud,” because that sounds like it’s referring to public cloud services … and it probably shouldn’t be. More on that to come.

So third, I might as well provide my current speculative definition of cloud up front, so that I can link back to it endlessly later on.

Cloud is a system where users acquire and manage technology resources on their own while the owners of those resources still maintain control of them.

Is this a decent start? Hopefully this shows why I’ve always maintained that cloud and virtualization are actually entirely different animals.

Follow Guy Currier, one of Dell’s subject matter experts on cloud, on Twitter: @GuyCatDell.

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Ana Cantu

Managing Editor at Dell

Ana Cantu is Tech Page One’s managing editor for business content. Before joining Dell as a blogger and social media manager, she was a multimedia journalist, and was a member of the Los Angeles Times team awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. She is one of the company’s subject matter experts in cloud computing and data management.