Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Ever Had to Explain "Cloud" to a Non-Technical User?

Many of us have had the experience of explaining what “cloud” means, or comparing a traditional legacy telecom network architecture to the internet’s design. 


The simple answer likely remains the best: it’s a way, on a network diagram, to show non-specific parts of the network or parts one specific participant does not own or control. In other words, the cloud symbol abstracts all the rest of the network that is out of scope from the standpoint of a particular participant. 

Since the internet uses a virtualized infrastructure, the cloud symbol is a convenient way to show that other devices, network elements and processes are running, but a particular participant does not need to know the details, or actually care very much. 


All that is quite different from past representations of the legacy voice network, which is highly structured, even if many of its processes likewise can be abstracted.


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