"Cloud" software ?

[Frank Bonnet]

On 05/25/2012 04:49 PM, Arthur Chance wrote:
> 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.


Well ... in short I need to let our users ( students + profs ) access 
and share their data ( living in their UNIX home directories )
The access must be easy and possible from as much devices as possible.
Am I clear enough ? ( sorry English is not my native language ...)