I just found an interesting article in Wikipedia that has a great explanation of cloud computing, with an interesting aspect. Most articles seem to focus on explaining what cloud computing is and how it works, but this one brought up an interesting aspect in that one of the benefits of cloud computing is that it simply allows the user to be naive (in a good way) to the complications that makeup the infrastructure. It provides an alternative to a user having to setup and configure an environment that meets their needs.
Before cloud computing it was necessary to know about and configure requirements for servers in terms of networking, speed, etc. Cloud computing changes this by letting the user simply pick the application that will be run without having to worry about the details. Click here for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
