What Is the “Cloud”?

Th e “Cloud” is a term-more of a metaphor really-that has come to mean so many things to so many diff erent people, that it defi es simple classifi cation. When people talk about the Cloud, they could be referring specifi cally to “Cloud Storage”, “Cloud Computing”, or “Software as a Service” (each of which deserves its own explanation), but mostly they just mean “in the Internet”. What the Cloud ultimately represents, though, is an abstraction of Information Technology (IT).