Some people are still a little cloudy about the cloud. They shouldn’t be.

Let’s go over the basics again. The National Institute of Standards and Technology spelled out cloud computing for us years ago: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

Clouds must have five essential characteristics: On-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity or expansion, and measured service. On these fundamentals, cloud designers have created a whole new IT approach.

Everything you need to know about clouds and hybrid IT. More>