Watching a CEO for a new "cloud computing" company describe his company on a finance TV program today, he said something like "Cloud computing is superior to old-fashioned client-server computing".
Now I'm confused. Can someone please explain what "cloud computing" means in contrast to client-server?
As far as I understand it, cloud computing is more of a network services model, such that I do not own or maintain the physical hardware. The "cloud" is all the back-end stuff. But I still might have an application that communicates with that "cloud" environment. And if I run a web site presents a form that a user fills out, pushes a button on the page, and returns some report that was generated by the web server, isn't that the same as "cloud" computing? And would you not consider my web browser as the "client"?
Please note my question is specific to the concept of "cloud computing" with respect to "client-server".
Sorry if this is an inappropriate question for this site; it's the one closest in the Stack universe and this is my first time here. I'm an old timer, programming since mainframe days in the late 70's.
Best Answer
Strictly speaking, there is no 'Cloud'. Not in the sense of what that CEO was spouting. There's an Internet, of course. There's hosted services. There's VPS's. There's content delivery systems. We've (technical folks) have adapted to the term to reference certain hosted service models. But 'Cloud' in consumer media is largely a marketing term loosely translated as 'internet'. More often than not, it also means 'I get to charge you by the month'.
You are correct in your thoughts that the two terms, 'cloud' and 'client-server' aren't related. Having a service hosted 'in the cloud' (I always want to add a dramatic 'dun-dun-daaaaaaa' after using that phrase) does not make a client-server app any less client-server-y. For example, the 'web' primarily uses a client-server model. The web browser is the client. The web server is the server. That a web server is hosted 'in the cloud' does not change the fact that the web browser / web server relationship is client-server.
So the term client-server defines the relationship between two entities in a system. Where the entities are physically hosted is irrelevant.
Basically, you are correct. The two are not comparable.