In the 1960’s we used to send work out to a 3rd party who would keypunch (remember 80 column punched cards), processes and return reports (remember greenbar). That was the 1960s “Cloud”. In the 1980’s and 90’s it was typically local key entry via a terminal over a dedication comm line to a system at the 3rd party’s facility with reports sent back via the comm line to our printer. Now we see similar processing models using the web instead of dedicated comm lines. I guess this is the third generation of outsourcing, or “IT Outsourcing 3.0″.

Frankly, I don’t care what you call it. Service Bureau, ASP, SaaS, Cloud, whatever. It is still outsourced IT. Next year some consultancy like Gartner will surely come up with an new name so they can write papers and host seminars.

The only reasonable differentiator vs. other web models I have heard suggests that “Cloud Computing” can take many shapes including – software applications only, hardware platform only, services (i.e. development) only, or some combination of the 3.

Sorry, I still see [it as] IT outsourcing. Been doing it for 50 years. Differences – yeh, a bit, but the biggest thing (other than speed) has been changing the Web Cloud for the Exhaust Cloud from the vehicle taking our 1960’s data to the processor and back to us.

Steve Murray
Supply Chain Visions

The cloud is really a resource for IT implementing an application by utilizing components that reside elsewhere on the Internet, and in this sense Mr. Ellison is right. Cloud can be used by an application developed by your own IT department or implemented by your application provider. SaaS applications are good candidates to utilize the cloud in their own back end, if they choose, and can also serve resources to the cloud.