"it is too nebulous and non-descriptive" Agree but wouldn't you say that sole use of physical hardware (whether or not you own or lease that hardware and regar

"it is too nebulous and non-descriptive" Agree but wouldn't you say that sole use of physical hardware (whether or not you own or lease that hardware and regardless of physical location) is really the issue that separates cloud from non cloud? Example: We have servers that we own in our offices. We have servers that we own in colocation. We have some dedicated virtual servers at MT http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/dv/ http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/dv/ I consider the MT servers cloud since the hardware is shared. And what we are paying for is simply memory, transfer and disk space. I don't even know what hardware we are running on there and I don't know anyone else that is running on that hardware either. But I would also consider the servers in the office and the colocated servers non-cloud even if they were leased (which they are not).