Computerworld: Cloud Computing: Today's Four Favorite Flavors, Explained

8 July, 2010

Cloud computing is famous for being a metaphor instead of a technology, but that metaphor is increasingly hard for non-techies to understand. Many variations of cloud have emerged...

Rather than buy large-scale services with a lot of configuration and management from Amazon or other hosting companies, it makes sense to have a service you can use to get IT-on-demand for workgroups rather than enterprises, according to Steve Peltzman, CIO of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

..."There are lots of needs, strategic or tactical, we have to meet during the day without having a rack of servers to pull out to do it. We look at where it makes sense to outsource SaaS providers, SalesForce, outsourcing email to Gmail, Amazon or Cloudshare for platform. Sometimes I don't know what we're going to use a specific service or function for, but I know we're going to need it. That's what I'm looking to the cloud for."

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