What is the difference between Clouding and Web Hosting (shared/ Dedicated)?

Question

I've been going through the pain of find the way of making a fair call to say that Clouding give this and that to the Management. So far whatever I've found that I can find in the same dedicated/ or shared web hosting but how clouding is making a huge call in the Software Industry?

I've been searching for the simple question about what is cloud hosting or in other words: how Clouding is different than Mainframe computers that we used to have.

They say that you don't need to install any software; So that mean you don't need to buy license for new employee.

Okay let us implement this for we developers:

If I've been employed they have to give me Visual Studio 2010 license; if they are not Microsoft Gold Partner, it may cost them more so it is advised that they will give me clouding computer; so can I say it is just a dedicated server/ virtual server hosted somewhere? If not then how it is different?

They say that you will pay as you use. But the down side is what if I use too much and that can cost fortune to the company?

I know it can be a smallest point to say but who is going to pay the cost of good Internet. Being in Australia I still use normal 2 GB plan, in house, for mailing. So then If I want to work, I will / or company has to pay. How it is different.

Distributed Vs. Centralised.

Now the quesion is back in the Industry that says Clauding is centralized. So that means I don't need to worry about anything or making a change is easy.

Oh well so the problem is I have to have backups to ensure that my centralized never goes down.

I think Clouding is not any different than what we have in IT industry already.

Why should I look for person with Clouding skills? Why should I learn Clouding?

Any (unbiased) comments?

Answer 1

The difference between cloud computing and traditional hosting is the implied scalability and separation of components. Cloud computing most often refers to running in a virtualized environment that automatically scales up or down based on demand. Additionally, cloud computing is used to refer to applications that are either themselves hosted in parts across multiple virtual hosts or utilize services provided by separate hosts or services.

For example, a traditional app may be hosted on a virtual server in a remote host but have all of it's code and functionality self-contained. A contrasting cloud computing app may have a core app, a database, static content storage, and dynamic streaming content, all handled separately.

There is a lot of gray area though. Clearly services like Amazon's AWS and Azure which have dynamic scalability and separate functionality across different virtual services are considered cloud computing. A traditional host that simply rents a dedicate server generally is not considered a cloud service. However, many larger traditional hosts like MediaTemple (just an example, this is not an endorsement) offer some dynamic scalability and integration of 3rd party cloud services. In this case this host most often will also be considered cloud computing.

And lastly, there is of course a buzz-word aspect. I think this is less of an issue than with "Web 2.0" in that there are some actual technical differences between the newest offerings in cloud computing vs traditional hosts, but the gray area definitely creates a tendency toward buzzwordness.