Putting The Cloud in simpler terms

I’ve heard a lot of people over the last few weeks ask what The Cloud is. Many organizations say they’re all about The Cloud; analysts say that The Cloud is the Next Big Thing. Suddenly, so many companies are suddenly on The Cloud that it’s ridiculous.

Sure, it's pretty, but what exactly is The Cloud?

So what is The Cloud, and what does it mean for the average business? The technical folks at visionapp may cringe at the oversimplification, but as I see it, The Cloud is basically when a task the user performs is performed over the Internet instead of a local computer. Implementing the task can be started on one’s workstation using a client (Skype is an example of this) or a web-based interface (such as everybody’s favorite SaaS example, Salesforce). The computations, though, are not done on that user’s workstation or in the user’s company’s server room; from the user’s perspective, it’s done “over the Internet.”

In reality, of course, the processing is done (most often) on the software vendor’s own servers in the vendor’s data center. This makes a lot of sense when the task that you want to do requires a large investment on your part. For instance, part of Salesforce’s success is that the in-house resources needed for a CRM system are huge, and it’s much easier to pay $50 a month per user and start today than $10,000 or more to start a CRM project that may not be ready for a few months.

visionapp is actually doing a lot of this today, especially in Europe, with technology based on its visionapp Workspace Management platform. One of the largest telecommunications companies in the world are hosting business applications over The Cloud using visionapp technology. And the telecommunication company’s customers are seeing a much lower initial investment, lower requirements for their own workstations, and lower maintenance costs — adding up to a lower cost of ownership and lower operating expenses.