I attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. As in so many other places these days, both on and offline, a lot of the buzz and talk was centered around The Cloud and Cloud Computing. What is it? What can it do for us? Who uses it? It's easy to get into long discussions about these topics and there are many articles, blog posts and even books covering a wide array of aspects and philosophies of Cloud Computing. I'll try to give a very brief and cursory overview below in an attempt not to cause immediate information overload. If you would like to continue the discussion a bit more in-depth, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me at any time.

What is it?

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There are still quite extensive (and sometimes heated...) debates going on regarding how to define The Cloud and services operating from The Cloud. I'm a visual person and I think this video is a good attempt at depicting The Cloud, what it is and where it came from.

A few highlights:

• A collection of shared, internet accessible resources or infrastructure evolved from several "as a Service" infrastructure and software delivery models
• Can be tapped into on an as-needed basis (resources can be scaled up or down with little to no effort)
• Pay for the resources you use, and don't pay for what you don't use (utility type metered billing model)
• "Open" philosophy (open meaning access from any device anywhere at a higher level and API access at a lower level)

Some people like to argue that with the evolution of The Cloud, the various "as a Service" concepts have become obsolete. I don't necessarily subscribe to that view. To use a familiar example: Google Apps (GA). GA is what has traditionally been categorized as Software as a Service (SaaS), and I think that is still the most accurate description of what it is. However, since GA runs off The Cloud you could make the argument that it should be called a Cloud [based] Service.

What can it do for us?

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Besides the obvious and immediate cost savings associated with life in The Cloud, it also offers a level of flexibility in a number of areas that is previously unparalleled in the computing world:

• No more long binding hardware/hosting contracts
• Need a staging site for that one new application to show off for an afternoon? No problem, just click a button
• Have a high profile campaign driving a lot of traffic to your web site? Deploy some extra resources for the duration of the campaign effect and terminate them at will as soon as your traffic returns to normal levels
• Need some compelling arguments when presenting and/or defending your web operations budget? How about: no longer will you be spending on what you might need, you are now spending on what you in actuality need and use

So what's the catch? There really is no catch to speak of. The barrier of entry to The Cloud is very low, cost is exclusively operational as opposed to in previous years where the barrier of entry to high level computing resources has been associated with large upfront capital expenditures.

Who uses it?

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Chances are you as an individual or maybe in some business capacity, are already taking advantage of what The Cloud has to offer in some way or another without even knowing about it, which is coincidentally one of the major characteristics of The Cloud; the abstraction of the underlying infrastructure, hardware or software platform. I mentioned Google Apps above, here are some other major players using The Cloud and/or providing access to it and services running from it:

• Salesforce.com - provides cloud services
• Amazon.com - provides cloud services and cloud infrastructure (which have evolved from an infrastructure that mainly came about due to its own need for an operating platform for its e-commerce business)
• Razorfish.com - operates from The Cloud

The distinction between who "uses" the cloud and who provides access to cloud infrastructure and services can sometimes be a little fuzzy since providers are oftentimes middle men and end users as well, and vice versa.

Final words

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At Forum One we offer our clients and partners a slice of, and a guided way into, The Cloud and all of the benefits discussed above through our partnership with Rackspace and its Cloud Division. We also have several SaaS offerings (or Cloud Service offerings if you will), our flagship being ProjectSpaces. The Cloud isn't just the future of computing, it is here now and ready for you to put to use!