What the Hell is Cloud Computing?

The Chief Geeks of Nasdaq and HP give the 30-second answer.

There's been a lot of buzz about Cloud Computing the last few weeks. For those of us with our feet still on the ground, a panel of top CIOs and CTOs gave the executive overview at last week's Summit at Stanford.

Anna Ewing invites us to think "distribution": Take high-powered enterprise technology and make it available to the masses via the internet. Russ Daniels of HP talks about the more practical aspect of cloud computing. He believes the essential ingredient is virtualization--getting someone else's computer to do your work for you. This brings down your company's operational costs, freeing up capital while making your company overall more efficient.

But it's not all about the bottom line, says Salesforce.com's Polly Sumner. Cloud computing also makes enterprise software more human -- SaaS providers are driven to deliver superior customer service, since clients can leave at any time. Imagine that -- technology forcing us to be more human. Check out the video for more.