Cloud computing, according to the Berkeley RAD Lab

An interesting paper written by the Berkeley RAD Lab was published recently, and it has already drawn comments on O´Reilly Radar and from Nicholas Carr.

The text introduces a practical definition of what Cloud Computing means, and from there goes on to an interesting analysis of the Cloud Computing business.

Cloud Computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters that provide those services. The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made available in a pay-as-you-go manner to the general public, we call it a Public Cloud; the service being sold is Utility Computing. We use the term Private Cloud to refer to internal datacenters of a business or other organization, not made available to the general public. Thus, Cloud Computing is the sum of SaaS and Utility Computing, but does not include Private Clouds.