Learning Cloud Computing Vocabulary

If you are following developments in cloud computing, even a little, you know that there are new terms and concepts added every day. It’s easy to get lost as familiar terms get co-opted and new ones get added.

Unfortunately, it’s also hard to find decent articles to help sort through it all. Doing a Google search for “cloud computing primer”, quoted which means that the article needs to have that exact phrase in its body or title turns up a daunting 186,000 hits. Most of them are only primers if you already understand a lot about the cloud.

So it’s nice to see a simple, easy to understand piece that clearly explains many of the key concepts. “Think of EC2 as the computational brain behind an online application or service.” That sentence is one of many in the article “Cracking the cloud: An Amazon Web Services primer. It’s short and easy to understand, explaining in simple language how the Amazon Cloud works and what the key parts are. Read this and in addition to “Elastic Cloud Compute”, you’ll be able to use terms like “Elastic Load Balance” and “Elastic Block Storage” with confidence.

It won’t turn you into an expert, but it will help you when you are talking to experts about how the cloud can be used to help make your business more efficient and flexible while saving money at the same time.