As I write, the VentureBeat offices sit enveloped by a cloud. In all directions, the fog wraps our office building in a soft, gray fuzz, obscuring the views of downtown San Francisco, the bay, and the ocean.
It’s not unlike the cloud of marketing and hype surrounding “cloud” technologies. A fog of jargony words and needlessly ugly acronyms obscure understanding and make everything look like the same, soft grayish fog.
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, cloudware, private clouds, cloudsourcing, utility computing … even the word “platform” gets overused and abused, rendering it nearly meaningless. What do all these terms mean? It’s easy to get lost in them if you’re not already deeply wrapped up in the cloud.
So I’ll be honest: Even though VentureBeat has a cloud channel and we’re planning a cloud conference that’s happening later this week (you should go!), I started out as a serious skeptic of all things “cloud.”
Continue reading: Dylan’s Desk: How I learned to stop worrying and love “the cloud” | VentureBeat.
