What is Cloud?

What is the cloud? Where is the cloud? Are we in the cloud now? These are all questions you have probably heard or even asked yourself. The term cloud is everywhere. Cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer's hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats. The cloud is also not about having a dedicated network attached storage hardware or server in residence.