When jumping into the Cloud, or at least, when considering to do so, you might want to investigate what it is about.

Geeks though have a tendency to use abbreviations and if you are unfamiliar with that it is a bit frustrating to find your way around information. At the same time, new technology needs to be called new names. So here is a basic Cloud glossary for you:

Cloud Computing term #1: IaaS IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a service and if you could visualize what it is, think of it as the most basic level of cloud computing. IaaS handles all the equipment, from the servers used to comprise a cloud (private or public) to the networking components essential for the network to… work.

Cloud Computing term #2: Private Cloud Some companies decide to set up their own cloud with infrastructure owned by the company alone. It allows the company to benefit from the cloud features yet they keep everything in their premises and establish exclusive use.

Cloud Computing term #3: Public Cloud It is the exact opposite of the private cloud. Public is the cloud network that is handled by a third party, not the company, and it also handles the data of other clients. Companies utilizing the public cloud may not have their data “near” them but they save up in time and cost on issues concerning maintenance and they pay the services they enjoy, per use.

Cloud Computing term #4: Hybrid Cloud As the name denotes, hybrid is a combination between the private and the public cloud. Many companies need to keep some of their critical data in a private cloud and at the same time, enjoy the scalability in use and resources of the public cloud. Therefore they deploy both into a combined solution that meets their needs.

Cloud Computing term #5: SaaS The abbreviation stands for Software as a Service and it refers to web-hosted applications, software, which is ready to use.

Cloud Computing term #6: PaaS It stands for Platform as a Service and it is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform in which the customer creates the software using tools or libraries from the provider and they control the software deployment and the configuration settings. You can find different kinds of platform vendors around yet the choice is between those who offer the most integrated services as business tools, together with the deployment environment.

Cloud Computing term #7: Cloud bursting Cloud bursting is a very useful way to utilize a combination of the private and the public cloud. In Cloud bursting, if you run an application in your private cloud and then the internal server becomes overloaded, then application uses resources in the public cloud is another handy way to combine the private and public cloud. In this combination, an application is run in the private cloud, but if the internal server becomes overloaded, the application then bursts into the public cloud, avoiding potentially devastating downtime and lost revenue.

Cloud Computing term #8: Elastic computing Depending on a business needs in the cloud, elastic computing is the ability to increase and decrease computing resources (storage, memory) so that you can always meet the needs during pick usage and scale back in less busy periods.

Cloud Computing term #9: Vendor lock-in This term refers to the common instance on not being able to easily switch providers when handling your cloud, because of protocols or data structures used by your current provider. As a company you can choose your service provider according to your preferences and the flexibility you need in case you need to move your data elsewhere.

Cloud Computing term #10: Pay per use pricing model This is the pricing model which is based on the consumption of service by the user. A provider using this pay-per-use pricing model will charge for example per gigabyte of data stored in the system.