I have to take a stand against the expression which have become so popular:

"The cloud is just someone else's computer."

First off; it might be a revelation to some people, who aren't very technical, but have now suddenly discovered cloud computing, that The Cloud is actually built on top of a lot of servers, which again is a highly specialized computers. That might feel like it's "just someone else's computer."

But. For any technically inclined person, this is not an excuse.

Saying it's "just someone else's computer", is like saying that a taxi is "just someone else's car."

Apart from the server itself, there is so much else that's done for you in the cloud. There's maintenance, repairs, upgrades and replacement. You don't have to invest in a new server, you only pay for what you use.

If you're using software as a service, even updates and patches to the operating system, the software itself and supporting systems are handled in the background.

There's an infrastructure which is kept up to date. And that infrastructure is connected to the backbone of the internet. It means that instead of having your server trudge through all the proverbial small country roads before getting to the highway, it's directly connected to the large highway instead.

There is so much work and orchestration going on in the background that makes it so very, very much more than someone else's computer.

/rant

This post was originally published on blog.jonstodle.com