What, you may be thinking, is cloud computing? Basically, it means obtaining computing resources — processing, storage, messaging, databases and so on — from someplace outside your own four walls, and paying only for what you use.
It’s a mushy term that is being applied loosely to many things on the Web. Salesforce.com is now called a cloud application — after all, companies let it store their sales data, rather than running it on their own systems. Facebook, too, is a cloud platform, because software developers write applications for it and distribute them on it.
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/technology/25proto.html?_r=1&oref=slogin