A few weeks ago I presented to the New Zealand Cloud Computing Summit. My presentation was titled “An overview of applications that are currently delivered via the cloud and potential applications for the future” however, taking a look at the delegate list a few weeks before the event it became clear that the average attendee was a C-level executive with very little cloud exposure – as such definitions and explanations were the best strategy for my talk.

While my presentation isn’t going to be anything new to the vast majority of readers, in my (entirely biased) opinion, it gives a good high level look at cloud computing, with enough case studies to hopefully show the value to be gained for enterprise by dabbling in the cloud.

I would have thought that the majority of us dealing with this stuff day to day but a post over on Enterprise Advocates got me wondering whether in fact I’d been naive in thinking this way. While the post itself picks up another topic, it highlights the emergence (at least from one person) of a new term to talk about Cloud Computing. The author is using the acronym SOC to stand for SaaS/On Demand/Cloud. The term had me scratching my head – cloud is, after all, an umbrella term under which SaaS, PaaS and IaaS fall. As such, both SaaS and On Demand l accept are a subset of Cloud, but shouldn’t be used in a way that suggests substitutability of the terms. As one commenter said;

The 3 [terms] are related, but Cloud Computing covers the whole topic. I think you should drop this new acronym because we already have too many confusing terms. Most organizations are happy to talk Cloud and as a sub text explain how that covers SaaS, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service

Anyway – given the post it seems that my slideshow may, in fact, be timely. It’s been on Slideshare for a few weeks now and seems to have gained a bit of a following – either than or slideshare has had a quiet few weeks. EIther way, enjoy!

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Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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