Explaining Cloud Computing

In my class next week I plan to discuss cloud computing options.  Cloud computing is not new but unfortunately, the terminology associated with cloud computing has not yet been consistently applied.  In previous years I noticed the students struggling to understand the different cloud computing options based on the inconsistent terminology used in publications.

The textbook we use in this class defines cloud computing as a type of Internet-delivered service, application, and capacity infrastructure provided by third-party providers (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).  This description gives our students a good general description and the authors go into greater detail in the chapter but the students are not exposed to an overall view of cloud computing.

As I noted in a earlier post, I'm pretty excited about using ontology diagrams as a form of knowledge visualization.  So I thought I would use this approach to help my students.  In order to help better explain cloud computing to my students I'm going to use a diagram to depict the forms of cloud computing (converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge for the creation of tacit knowledge).

Below is a brief mind map I created to explain cloud computing.

I hope to use this mind map in class to help the students categorize the forms of cloud computing and work with them do provide examples of each of these types of cloud computing.  With this better understanding we will be able to discuss the benefits and challenges of this infrastructure option.