Defining The Cloud: From Water Vapor to Concrete Infrastructure
By Rich Wolski | April 02, 2011  When cloud computing emerged,
it spawned a healthy debate regarding its definition. Like the
word "irony" famously immortalized in the film "Reality Bites,"
the term "cloud" was immediately familiar and undefinable for
most technologists. "You'll know it when you see it."  Roughly
three and a half years later, though, the community has
experimented with cloud computing enough to, more or less,
extinguish the debate on its definition. One rarely hears or
reads about either a definition of cloud computing or an
argument over conflicting definitions of cloud computing. At the
risk of re-igniting this debate, I'll offer my thoughts on a
working definition at this point in the development of cloud
computing as a technology.  Before doing so, however, I believe
a discussion of cloud principles will help explain the specific
definition I offer. The high-level vision for cloud computing is
that it "flattens" the computat