"Cloud" software ?

[Arthur Chance]

On 05/25/12 15:12, Frank Bonnet wrote:
> On 05/25/2012 04:04 PM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
>>>
>>> With apologies to Joni Mitchell:
>>>
>>> I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
>>> From up and down, and still somehow,
>>> It's cloud illusions I recall,
>>> I really don't know clouds, at all.
>>>
>>> Well, someone had to say it. :-) It summarises the marketing hype
>>> perfectly.
>>
>> fashion is quite often deciding factor not just in clothes. Actually
>> it works just the same in IT. What is funny with "cloud computing"
>> (new fashion trend) is that isn't defined at all. most probably
>> marketing people found out that it is not needed to define anything to
>> make people buy....ANYTHING.
>
> Well ... My goal was NOT to start a flame war around the "cloud" term ...

I wasn't flaming, just remarking on the fact that the meaning of "cloud" 
depends on the company that is trying to sell you cloud related products.

> next time I'll choose better words :-)

A bit more specific would be useful.

> we would like to offer to our students and professors
> a kind of private cloud to access/manipulate  their personnal data
> from almost anywhere and with almost any devices

could be taken to mean anything from WebDAV/Dropbox functionality to 
Hadoop type processing or data mining. What sort of and how much 
"manipulation" is needed? If you answer that it would let us help you more.