The Cloud: a short introduction
November 8th, 2009 | by Jon Stokes
There's a kind of supply-and-demand dynamic that applies to technical terms—when a few knowledgeable insiders are hoarding a word, it maintains its meaning, but when the masses get hold of it and abuse it, it's quickly emptied of value. This is certainly the case with "the cloud," a term that used to mean something, and now means everything and nothing. "The cloud" is so overused by startups desperate for VC money, and by big companies desperate to look like hip startups, that IT professionals are increasingly wary of anything cloud-related. It doesn't help that the image conjured by the word is of something vaporous, flimsy, and fleeting—whatever cloud is, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you want to entrust critical business functions to.
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