So what do we mean by the 'Internet Cloud'?
Danny dropped by and asked me: "Hi Alex, do you happen to know of any half-decent definition of "the cloud"?"
I know it sounds corny, but 'good question'!!
So I'll give it a go.
Now, I could get textual, but I'll first try to answer with a few pics...
Maybe I see the 'cloud' as over-developed green jellyfish layer that's growing over the surface and orbit of Earth?
Hmmm, maybe not.
Or is it more like a cliché?
Maybe it's more like one giant thought-bubble in the sky?
Or a memecloud perhaps...
Or, and I do like this one, a cloud of APIs:
Enough pics.
Let's get textual now. Here are some that allude to the half-decent definition you're asking for:
"the Internet cloud, where massive facilities across the globe will store all the data you'll ever use" - George Gilder
Good, but limiting. The cloud is much more than 'just' all the data in the sky. Next...
"Like a cloud, the Net can't be pinned down - it's alive, unpredictable, and, as innumerable startups learn, can prove a funnel cloud or even a Bengali typhoon. When the Internet is depicted as cumulus humilis, it's dead wrong...It's much more altostratus - intense, rapid - and a failure to give it proper respect can result in disaster." - John Chambers
Yeah, kind of, but not particularly helpful in terms of understanding what is meant by 'cloud' (and, frankly, a little over-dramatic for my taste).
The next is more like it:
"Once your software becomes a service in the cloud, it opens up the potential to link it up with other services that are out there. For many vendors and users this is still a barely dawning realization, but it's of fundamental importance. In many ways, the Internet cloud is one great global SOA — still very rudimentary in many ways, but flexible enough to accommodate different levels of sophistication, and evolving fast." - Phil Whainewright
Descriptive, yes, and with the right keyword: services, but it's not really the definition I think you might be looking for.
So I'll have a go this time. Consider this a mesh-up (and I mean 'mesh') of the above definitions:
The Internet cloud, where the distributed and programmable network of services across the globe will serve all the data, resources and functionality we will ever use.
I grant, it's more of a prediction than a definition as I'm using the future tense ('will') rather than the present tense ('does'). But we're all going there. It's just a matter of when.
How's that?