Crazy little thing called cloud

by. Kevin Hout

I’m sure you’ve heard of that thing called the cloud.

You know, that buzz word analysts and experts toss around relentlessly. All the leading computer companies want us to use their cloud: Google, Amazon and Microsoft. It’s all the rage.

But what is it?

In reality, it’s just a bunch of servers located in a cage in a datacenter. Not that anyone out there thought it was actually based in the clouds, right? But did you know it’s actually been around for a long time?

Really.

A little bit of personal history: When I was in the Air Force and in technical school, my instructors would periodically draw the cloud – a really little one – on white boards and then indicate what happens outside the cloud’s walls. Everything that happened within the cloud’s walls – well, that we never got into. It just happened, like magic. Our instructors mostly glossed over that part. Whenever this would happen, everyone would laugh.

In the military, no one laughs. Especially at instructors. But there we were, laughing.

Beyond what happens in the cloud, the big question, my instructors said, was whether an organization wanted to manage its own infrastructure and software with on-premises servers or outsource it via the cloud. This is as true today as it was back in 1999.

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