What is Cloud computing?

I hear a lot about "cloud computing" But the comercials never really say what it actually is. How does it work, what does it cost, What equipment is needed. The commercails are great but useless when it comes to Why would I a regular consumer want it.What is Cloud computing?
The term was adopted from the use of cloud symbols to represent the internet in diagrams and charts. This can be availed online where customers can get storage services, virtual servers, applications and so much more.
All cloud computing really is is the hosting of software and services in a data center, instead of on a local machine. An example of Cloud based services would be Gmail, Hot mail, Yahoo mail, Google's office tools and other applications that sit on someone else's server, which you can then access from any desktop anywhere in the world.



Google's Chrome OS, which is the big brother to their Android operating system, is Google's attempt to get people to move from their powerful desktop machines, to light weight, super fast machines that are up and running about 10 seconds after you turn them on. This is possible, because the new Chrome based computers won't have to load anything but the small OS, because the computer is set up to access the net for all it's applications, instead of preloading them off the hard drive.



If you're interested in testing one of the laptops for Google, here's the link: http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-pro鈥?/a>



As a side note, for those of us in the telecom/data industry who sell cloud based services, most of us sell what's called SaaS, which stands for Software as a Service. SaaS lets a company access software it needs to run, while at the same time lowering it's IT infrastructure costs. IT costs are lower because the company hosting the software keeps the software and licenses up to date. This means companies don't have to have IT teams loading software on hundreds or thousands of computers, and then having to keep paper trails of the licenses for the software.



(I saw a warehouse once, with 100,000 copies of windows on pallets with a guard walking around them. The software was all new, and never used, but the company had to keep them, since they had that many machines using that version of windows. The IT department just ghosted the software on to the hard drives, so they only needed a copy or two to do the actual work...)



GregWhat is Cloud computing?
Hi,

You can get more information on cloud computing in the links mentioned below:



http://4cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-cloud-in-simple-terms.html

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/cloud-computing-introduction.html



I hope it helps you to understand the term in more easy and better manner.
here is a better explanation http://yizhantech.com/2011/04/consepts-of-cloud-computing/What is Cloud computing?
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-鈥?/a>