Is cloud computing similar to new modern datacentre?

Could computing in simple terms is hosting your computing infrastructure on virtual infrastructure. It is a combination of Infrastructure as service (IaaS), platform as service(PaaS) and Software as Service(SaaS). This facilitates quick provisioning of required IT resources in limited amount of time.  There are two kind of clouds Public and Private clouds. Public clouds means hosting your IT infrastructure on services providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure etc..  The advantage of public cloud  is that an organization need not  invest in IT infrastructure and platforms, which is a recurring expense(Capex as well as Opex). You don’t  need to change your hardware every few years.. Not only this, the maintenance activities like patching, security features etc.. are generally taken care by service providers. The amount of  Capex and Opex that need to be spend by an organization is much less when compared to hosting your own IT infrastructure in your own premises. Though there is still some hesitation by organizations to adopt to public cloud computing, this scenarios is slowly changing

Extreme security sensitive organizations like Banks, other financial institutions or defence organizations set up their own cloud infrastructure by using the advent of visualization technology. Of course there is some definite increased cost attached to this, but in context of security requirements, this is worthwhile.

Cloud computing:

Is defined as a type of computing that relies onsharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handleapplications. Cloud computing is comparable to grid computing, a type of computing where unused processing cycles of all computers in a network are harnesses to solve problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine.

In cloud computing, the word cloud(also phrased as "the cloud") is used as a metaphor for "the Internet," so the phrase cloud computing means "a type of Internet-based computing," where different services — such as servers, storage and applications —are delivered to an organization's computers and devices through the Internet.

How Cloud Computing Works:

The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing, orhigh-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios, to deliver personalized information, to provide data storage or to power large, immersive online computer games.

To do this, cloud computing uses networks of large groups of serverstypically running low-cost consumer PC technology with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. This sharedIT infrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together. Often, virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing.