It is hype and it is backed my marketing dollars. We have SaaS, we have PaaS, we have IaaS (still waiting for the SaaP to come).
Many existed before but without the level of sophistication and evolution that has come with reduced storage / increased bandwidth / increased computation power.
A lot of what has been done for years has been updated slightly and rebranded. There's not a lot of innovation.
Hosting with Backup is now Cloud
Service with Failover is now Cloud
Service APIs are now Cloud
Online Storage is Cloud
Client Server is now Cloud
A Web App is now Cloud
Cloud is a nebulous term that means everything and nothing. The underlying technology in a lot of cases is vastly improved and innovating. The underlying technology in a lot of cases is nothing special, old, and as poorly architected as ever.
There is no standards body (which is good) and there is no standard definition (which is great for hype marketing).
I keep reading that the almighty cloud provides 100% up time, full scalability, no-worry-computing. Not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime, not in anyone's lifetime.
Find the right providers, the right innovators and the right architects and "cloud" computing is a fundamental shift in the way IT is run. It's there, no doubt. It's growing, no doubt... but I think as we move forward we'll start getting new names for specific implementations/architectures because the "cloud" is "where a miracle occurs" and no CIO can use that as a defense when something happens.
That said - Cloud will retain its purpose as a great marketing / domain name
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Sooner or later the reality will hit that economies are like buildings. Remove the supporting wall and it crumbles.
"People" cost more than hardware because we have "disposable peoples" creating those in foreign lands.
We're playing poker and a few hold all the chips and are sitting out. Not much of a fun game.