What is meant by cloud computing?

Can anyone explain it in vernacular style and how is it developed?What is meant by cloud computing?
I would recommend watching Cloud Computing Plain and Simple on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0. It provides a nice overview of the subject.What is meant by cloud computing?
Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client鈥搒erver in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.[1] Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.[2][3] It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet.[4]

The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network,[5] and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.[6] Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include SLAs.[7] The major cloud service providers include Microsoft, Salesforce, Skytap, Amazon and Google.[8][9]What is meant by cloud computing?
In a nut shell IT infrastructure on the internet. So you don't store data, software and applications on a harddrive or server anymore, it's all stored on the servers of your cloud host and accessed through a web browser. More detailed explanation and video can be found at

http://www.cloudcomputingguide.net
Hi there.

the basic idea is that we will be surrounded by data and by access systems at all times, so any device with wifi capability (mobile, blackberry, PDA, laptop, whatever) will be able to tap in to this "cloud" of data and access anywhere, anytime.



It will rely on wireless servers pumping out everywhere and it is supposed to remove the current need for plug-in points, wires, servers, separate systems etc.



Cheers, Steve.