Today’s technical jargon makes cloud computing sound so complex and confusing that you need an engineering degree to sort it all out. Most technology ambitious laymen spend all day reading up on what cloud computing is, and how it can help their business, and still can’t answer the simple question – what is cloud computing?

Relax, it’s not as complex as those marketing materials and websites make it out to be. Matter of fact, anyone can understand what cloud computing is.

Think back to the day when you had an answering machine connected to your phone that answered your calls and recorded messages for you while you were away. The answering machine was a physical piece of equipment that you needed to visit in person to play, erase, and delete your voice messages.

Today, you no longer own an answering machine. Instead, you use voice mail. By simply picking up your phone and entering in a couple key prompts, you are on your way to listening, deleting, and saving your messages. Gone are the days of owning a physical device to manage your messages. Now that it’s all handled by your telephone carrier, your messages are stored in a cloud.

That’s it. It’s that simple. Cloud computing is simply taking a device that you physically own and allowing someone else to manage and maintain it for you. You just access the information you need from it at any given time and then move on with your life.