Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
The cloud is nothing but a server accessible on the Internet. That's all it is. It's not a cloud. Even if you call it the cloud, you aren't correct. You don't ever store anything in a real cloud.
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"Cloud" is a shorthand for "elastic cloud", a shorthand which has grown to vastly surpass it's original usage. Elastic clouds are computing infrastructure designed to readily expand and contract as usage needs require -- resembling actual clouds as they accumulate and release water droplets. Cloud infrastructures are commonly seen as being publicly hosted and accessed via the Internet but they can be privately hosted as well. In fact, the earliest elastic clouds were privately hosted.
Thus "the cloud" is neither a single server nor does it require the Internet.