(Cath Everett, ZDNet) Cloud computing is one of the most overhyped phenomena to have hit the IT industry in a long time. It is a business model that definitely has its advantages. The trouble is vendors of all sizes and stripes are so desperate for a piece of the cloud action, they are willing to blur distinctions and fudge definitions for their own ends.

Their headlong pursuit has saddled cloud computing with so many misconceptions that it is sometimes difficult for customers to make informed business choices. ZDNet UK has looked at the most common myths, and debunks five of them here.

Myth 1: Cloud equals SaaS, grid and utility computing
The term 'cloud computing' has been hijacked by anyone wanting to make a service sound hip and interesting. Jumping on the latest bandwagon is a favourite pastime in the technology industry, but in this case it is creating confusion among customers, who are unsure what they should be asking for or what they're likely to get for their money.

So to clarify: cloud computing is a form of outsourcing by which vendors supply computing services to lots of customers over the internet. These services can range from applications, such as customer relationship management, to infrastructure, such as storage and the provision of development platforms.

The services are provided by massively scalable datacentres running hundreds of thousands of CPUs as a single compute engine, using virtualisation technology. That approach means workloads are distributed across multiple machines — which can also be located in multiple datacentres — and capacity can be allocated or scaled back according to a customer's needs.