An article on TechRepublic.com today titled, Why “the cloud” doesn’t matter, does a great job of demystifying “the Cloud”. Despite the title, it’s not critical of the cloud. Rather by explaining it, it should help people feel more comfortable with it.

Among other good points, it provides a simple definition: “Essentially, the cloud is little more than “stuff outside your company.” That “stuff” could be processing power, storage, networks, applications or any other bit of technical wizardry. When the CIO says she’ll “put that in the cloud,” all she is really saying is she will take something that was done in-house, and do it with someone else’s “stuff.” …. Often, the cloud refers to a third party’s applications, analogous to the enterprise equivalent of gmail or hotmail to employees.”

If you are at all baffled about what “the cloud” actually is, I highly recommend you read the entire article.