What is the Cloud?

In reality the cloud has being in existence since the internet itself. Why now you ask? In simple terms the availablity of high speed broadband to anyone that needs it means that information and processing once done between a server and PC on an internal network can now be achieved via the internet. This moves the server from your back office to a data center. In that data center are servers belonging to other companies,maybe on different continents. When some servers are not busy, its spare processing power is passed to busier servers and vice versa. This spreads the cost of maintaining that server among several companies and is passed on to the end user. Now that you no longer have access to a physical server like you once did the server is now virtual. The term cloud has become the widely used general term for all of the virtual servers in data centers around the world and the internet the link between them.