What’s the benefit of the cloud?

Given that most people don’t know what the cloud is, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that most people can’t articulate the benefits of cloud computing clearly. I commonly hear “Scalability!” “Easy provisioning!” “Flexibility!” and so on. Of course, all of these are benefits you can get without the cloud. Theo says it pretty well, so I won’t belabor that point.

What do you think are the benefits of cloud computing?

In the end I can think of only one really unique benefit, and it’s indirect. It is this: the rise of cloud computing is creating a social phenomenon among engineers. The benefit isn’t the technology, or the economics, or any of that stuff. It’s the change in people’s mindset towards thinking at a higher level of abstraction. For example, thinking about resources instead of machines, and APIs instead of programs.

Further Reading: