What exactly is the “Cloud”? Discerning the difference between reality and marketing buzz can be intimidating.
Much like in the mobility world, where incremental increases in network speeds soon became marketed as 4G (even though they don’t meet 4G specifications) people have been prepending the letters “i” and “e” to products and inserting the word “cloud” to all sorts of things just to make them contemporary.
To be sure, there is a never ending evolution in the IT world and the underlying technology. But there are clearly defined definitions for a Public, Private, Community and Hybrid “Cloud”; Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service(Paas), Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is an authority on the definition of these types of services. Click Here to read their Publication 800-145 which clearly defines the standards in lay mans terms.