Everybody is talking about the cloud technology, but it's very rare to see any good explanation or a practical use case. Let me try to explain my own understanding of the cloud.

I believe that cloud differentiate from any other hosting environment, when every server instance is replaceable or expandable on demand. In other words, when you can reinstall a complete system in a matter of minutes.

I have a great opportunity to test Bytemark's BigV Cloud and when I was playing with that (creating, removing, extending, replacing each virtual machine), I've realised what replaceability really means. You can dedicate whole operating system to a single application. To a single application dedicated to a certain group of customers without worrying about another group of customers.

This is what is possible when you have a real cloud computing technology available and you are not afraid to use it:

http://cloud.onxshop.com

Please note, the whole cloud.onxshop.com was created only in a couple of hours as an experiment, so use it with care!