Cloud Computing - Get Used to the Term

by Anita Campbell

August 31, 2008 at 10:02 pm · Filed under Web Apps

The term “cloud computing” seems to have come out of nowhere and exploded on the scene in the past year. I wondered if it was just me, or if the term really was of such recent vintage.

To test my theory, I went out to Google Trends and checked to see how the term “cloud computing” was trending. As it turns out “cloud computing” didn’t even appear on the Google Trends radar screen before October 2007. But look at the spike since then:

And what does “cloud computing” really mean? It refers to everything from software-as-a-service, to hardware-as-a-service, to social apps like Facebook that we may use — anything where we are taking advantage of something in central data centers that you access over the Internet. BusinessWeek had a decent explanation:

“The term ‘cloud computing’ encompasses many areas of tech, including software as a service, a software distribution method pioneered by Salesforce.com about a decade ago. It also includes newer avenues such as hardware as a service, a way to order storage and server capacity on demand from Amazon and others. What all these cloud computing services have in common, though, is that they’re all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers.”

Cloud computing is a major, fast-growing trend. Even if you are just getting the feel for this term, expect to see it regularly.

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12 Comments »

Honestly, this is my first time to hear such term. Even all through out I was in College to study IT, we never had this discussed. Well, grateful I learned about this. Let me check out more how this works.

[...] search term is becoming more or less popular over time. Over at The App Gapp I recently wrote about using Google Trends to test the growth in the phrase “cloud computing.“ Here is what I discovered. The term seemingly came out of nowhere in late 2007. Growth [...]

Actually, I’m surprised of the term when I first heard it. As you can see in my previous comment. I just drop by to share my short idea about it.

I think the reason why it is coined as ‘cloud computing’ because it is actually computing put in to the web. As you may always remember, even in our Networking classes, the World Wide Web is always represented by a cloud. IMO, this is what the etymology of “cloud computing” is.

[...] at The App Gap I recently wrote about using Google Trends to test the growth in the phrase “cloud computing.“ Here is what I discovered. The term seemingly came out of nowhere in late 2007. Growth [...]

That’s a good suggestion on the etymology. You’re right — the Internet is represented as a cloud. Intuitively we seem to understand that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I too have been seeing this term all over the net popping up more often every week. I had no idea what the term was referring too and am grateful to finally be “in the know”.

Nice post and views from the commenters too. Anyway, I have been used to this term for quite some time now and I also have that same realization of Mary Grace’ - about the etymology of the term.

Yes, you always have to go back to the roots and the meaning of the word in order to understand it fully. Now I see a mental picture of a cloud. Thanks for etymology lecture!

Are you trying to throw some joke or there’s really far behind your last statement?

Thanks for sharing insights about ‘cloud computing.’ It’s my first time to learn about that.

[...] Campbell posts on the {App}Gap: Cloud Computing - Get Used to the Term. The term “cloud computing” did not spring up as significant Google search term [...]

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