Console.WriteLine("Hello Cloud") ;

It might be an late blight to have a post on introduction to cloud when the cloud space is getting denser and started raining innovative ideas, tools , frameworks on and on..... for the benefit of late starters will take a late flight and catch up with the elephantine hadoop for distributed processing of large data sets across clusters to a healthy eucalyptus software services for your secure private cloud and not to forget some physics with elasticity  certainly no Young's modulus for the EC2 the stretchable computing capacity in the cloud.looks like there is big family out there to provide stability, scalability and most importantly security.
Before going deep dive in to the tools and frameworks on cloud , lets unabashedly get in to the basics of cloud and see whats seeding-in there.
What is a Cloud ?
The Wiki says Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet). should be no brainier. 
Whats on offer ?

Cloud Modes
Deployment modes of the cloud infrastructure depends on domain and info security. you get to choose the right fit for your organization.   

1. Public cloud Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional main stream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on  self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-site third-party provider who bills on a utility computing basis.
2. Community cloud A community cloud may be established where several organizations have similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the benefits of cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but may offer a higher level of privacy, security and/or policy compliance. Examples of community cloud include Google's "Gov Cloud.
3. Hybrid cloud The term "Hybrid Cloud" has been used to mean either two separate clouds joined together (public, private, internal or external), or a combination of virtualized cloud server instances used together with real physical hardware. The most correct definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" is probably the use of physical hardware and virtualized cloud server instances together to provide a single common service A combined cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers "will be typical for most enterprises". By integrating multiple cloud services users may be able to ease the transition to public cloud services while avoiding issues such as PCI compliance.
4. Private cloud Private cloud and internal cloud have been described as neologisms, vendors use the terms to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These products offer the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. These provide the benefits of utility computing -shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand.

What tools are available ?

    






idea of this post was to familiarize with cloud terminologies and a enabler for more technicalities on cloud and time for Billy Joe "Rain drops falling on my head......" 

hope its fulfilled !!