F4MS   Cloud computing

The latest computer talk now revolves around ‘the cloud.’ What is this cloud everyone is discussing these days? According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, it is possible to define the cloud with a specific and objective definition. The cloud is just a metaphor for the internet, using an often used symbol of the drawing of a cloud which in the past had been used to represent the telephone network, or more recently the way the internet was represented in computer network diagrams. The drawn cloud in the diagram is the abstract representation of the real but underlying infrastructure which makes up the internet that the cloud represents.

Providers of ‘cloud computing’ often bring their customers business applications online. These applications are accessed from a different web service or software such as a Web browser, but the software itself as well as the data, are stored on the servers.