What is cloud computing ? Before getting into the term what is cloud computing ask a question to yourself whether you have experiences working in the cloud. Every day we deal with cloud computing and use it. But the matter is we don’t know that is the cloud computing. The buzz cloud computing was a hot topic in 2007 and 2008. And still plenty of researches and business analyses are going in cloud computing.

Cloud computing is nothing other than using websites and web services for our use. Use in the sense it can be personal,business oriented or any thing else. Simply Facebook provides you a service of social networking. You save photos, videos and your notes in your accounts. You access them whenever you have an Internet connection. So the availability of the resources is high. Your share documents in the Skydrive, again whenever you have the access to Internet you have the access to your documents. And recently the Microsoft started the Office Web App. So the resources you saved and shared float above you like a cloud. Whenever you need them, you access it through the Internet. So cloud computing is not new to us and it is not other than the Internet computing and web services.

There are some buzz stories why we use the term cloud. One is most of the places and text books a cloud symbol is used to represent the Internet. So some say that’s the reason we call it cloud computing. Another story is the resources and the services you need, just float there and available every where like a cloud, and you can access it whenever you want it. Some say this is the reason how the word cloud came. But personally I prefer the 2nd one since it is more reasonable than the first one.

When it comes to cloud it has plenty of advantages

• Hardware and Software independent. (You just need a machine with Internet connection)
• High availability of the applications
• The companies need not to worry about the Server farm requirements
• Very cost effective
• And much more..

Please do not get confused between the web hosting and the Cloud computing. Web hosting is getting a domain name from a hosting company and pay the company, then your site is up there in the Internet. Cloud is hosting of course but differs from the normal hosting. When it comes to cloud computing it is a platform and a development environment but a normal hosting doesn’t have those features.

Cloud application provides more scalability for the applications, managing, configuring and much more. Apart from that cloud does not include only web pages (web pages work as front end for the application / service).

Understanding the cloud computing is simple and easy. One simple googling on cloud computing will fetch you thousands of resources.