Correct, but a number of providers pitch hosting as "cloud services"

there is a difference. IaaS uses technology to automate and self-service a lot of the process of creating, changing and removing infrastructure services - because it uses more automation then it can be quicker, more efficient, require less people... it's just like better hosting really. True a lot of companies that say they do IaaS don't actually, and it's all still very manual in a way that hasn't really changed in 15 years.

What you both seem to be saying is that cloud is about a modern service that uses up to date technology whereas hosting is about a low spec service using out of date technology.

But actually what is happening is that you are both falling victim to marketing bullst, 'cloud' is the modern name for it because it has allowed us to make something we have done for years sound new and sexy. Offering hosting on virtualised servers across multiple locations isn't new, connecting to it all by the internet isn't new, none of it is new. It's the same stuff we've been doing for years, we are doing it better now because technology keeps improving and allowing us to do more things and to automate it better, it's also more mainstream now because the costs have come down making it accessible to more people, but it's still fundamentally the same thing as it has been for years.

bks, I know full well what the difference is, you can hardly say that AWS is the same thing as some $10/month dreamhost account.

However I do agree there is marketing bks going on, plenty of companies are labeling products as 'cloud' when it's clearly just hosting. But that's not to say the true cloud services like AWS/Azure/Linode don't exist.

I don't know if maybe you are misunderstanding my point - i am not saying they are the same, they are clearly very different. I wasn't really talking about IaaS versus web hosting anyway, more IaaS versus typical managed service hosts. The tech that web hosting providers run is server racks plus basic middleware and/or HTTP, with some content management, typically they don't have a commitment to an SLA so they don't need the tech that underpins guaranteeing that. The tech that MSPs run is typically the server racks/farms plus monitoring, security, maybe some multi-tenanting etc to meet a given SLA. When asked to set up a server, they still tend to do it all manually, and they typically ringfence resource by plopping a new server in an existing rack etc. IaaS providers are fully virtualised compute, storage and maybe even network now, with orchestration tech, monitoring, service management and service request management, accounting/billing etc etc all automated. Most MSPs will become that over time, but web hosting companies never will.

The grey area that spurious suppliers create doesn't help the consumer get value from it all, and ends up creating a backlash against 'cloud' when actually a) it boils down into lots of different concepts and things to buy/sell and b) there is lack of clarity over what is cloud and what is not, from the consumer's perspective. I don't like the word because of those reasons.

All cloud means is that you connect to it via the internet, nothing else. It derives from the use of the cloud symbol to denote the internet on network diagrams.

The reason I call it marketing bullst is that some people seem to have a perception that it means something more than that, but I could put up an ancient PC on the end of a ropey internet connection in my garden shed and still call whatever I am offering a cloud service, there is nothing about cloud that means it needs to meet any standard other than connection across the internet.

Therein lies the problem, or the opportunity depending on your viewpoint, call what you are doing 'cloud' and people nod wisely and sign up to it thinking it implies something that it really doesn't.

And also why when someone asks what I do for a living, I say I sell shoes.

but that's the issue - that it's a public consumer term now. BT emailed me yesterday to tell me to try out their 'cloud' - which is basically just a white-labeled dropbox. MS had a 'to the cloud!' marketing campaign recently - apple has iCloud... lots of the things are either cloudy or not, but it's been jumped on as a term to market all sorts

I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't, back in the early 80s it had a certain exotic rareness to it and wasn't associated with the same kind of geekiness as it is now. Or maybe I was just deluded.

I've worked in IT for 30 years, I own several IT companies, I have been and am responsible for some pretty major IT projects...

IT used to be something where 'working with computers' was seen as something to be envied and now, sadly, I don't think it is. Too many of us doing it, too many mainstream programmes like the IT crowd or even the Big Bang Theory (yes, I know, they are physicists) have made 'geeks' figures to laugh at.

I'm sorry, but IT isn't cool now, it was (maybe) but now it isn't, I don't care, I like technology, it's what I do, it;'s earned me a lot of money and a great lifestyle but it isn't cool.