How is"cloud computing"different from "client-server"?

Posted by BellevueBob on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by BellevueBob
Published on 2013-10-16T18:15:14Z Indexed on 2013/10/24 10:10 UTC
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Watching a CEO for a new "cloud computing" company describe his company on a finance TV program today, he said something like "Cloud computing is superior to old-fashioned client-server computing".

Now I'm confused. Can someone please explain what "cloud computing" means in contrast to client-server?

As far as I understand it, cloud computing is more of a network services model, such that I do not own or maintain the physical hardware. The "cloud" is all the back-end stuff. But I still might have an application that communicates with that "cloud" environment. And if I run a web site presents a form that a user fills out, pushes a button on the page, and returns some report that was generated by the web server, isn't that the same as "cloud" computing? And would you not consider my web browser as the "client"?

Please note my question is specific to the concept of "cloud computing" with respect to "client-server".

Sorry if this is an inappropriate question for this site; it's the one closest in the Stack universe and this is my first time here. I'm an old timer, programming since mainframe days in the late 70's.

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