It is over five years since the term ‘cloud’ was first adopted into the mainstream to describe a fundamental change in how – and where – information technology is deployed.

Cloud’s building blocks had been developing for several years prior: the rise of the Internet as a backbone for service delivery; hardware platforms so powerful that they could run multiple web scale workloads; and the opening of standards for application and infrastructure architecture; all contributed to the cloud phenomenon, which went beyond simple hosting or application service provision.

The ability for providers to create massively scalable, homogeneous computing platforms enabled new delivery models which, it was clear, would reach beyond what had previously been possible in terms of processing capability, at the same time as making costs more affordable. No wonder, then, that industry players were so excited. 

Cloud – the current state of play

In principle, there is plenty to like …