Unless you have been under a rock (hiding from the depressing economic news, no doubt), then you know that the industry is buzzing with interest around Cloud Computing.  Due to the extraordinary degree of interest and constant questions regarding Cloud that I have seen from my clients, I thought it might be good to provide a quick primer and link to some helpful resources.

Cloud Computing 101

Definition: Delivering services and capabilities to systems or end users in a diverse network environment with the ability to abstract or even outsource infrastructure concerns such as data storage, network bandwidth, or even resource availability.

Telecom Analogy (describes the availability facet of cloud): Landline telephone service introduces various single-points of failure (the provider, physical cable from your house to a hub, the connection in your home, etc.).  Cellular telephone service relies more upon a cloud model (seamless support wherever you travel, if your provider has no tower or a tower goes down you can use another provider's tower seamlessly).

Dining Analogy (describes the on-demand facet of cloud): The Cloud Dining Analogy was first articulated by Omar Sultan here. The essential argument is that the service of cooking can be supported very flexibly (cook at home, order take-out, dine at the restaurant), and you can change your mind on-the-fly based upon the available resources in your pantry or the cleanliness of your kitchen.

Four Key Questions

Everyone has in mind some variation of the following four questions that must be answered regarding Cloud Computing:

• Where did Cloud Computing come from?
• What is so special about Cloud Computing?
• Why does Cloud matter?
• How can my organization explore Cloud?

I delivered a webinar yesterday, The Role of Cloud in the Modern Enterprise, to address these four questions.  If you didn't get a chance to attend, please feel free to download the presentation deck.