At its most basic, the term "cloud storage" describes data storage that is made available as a service via a network. But that definition is so broad that it can encompass everything from Internet-based services that store a consumer's email and digital photographs to a major corporation's backup data.

In the interest of clarification, industry analysts who deal with corporate IT professionals have been refining the definition of cloud storage to incorporate the following characteristics:

• Massively scalable
  
• Not tied to a specific geographic location
  
• Based on commodity components
  
• Billed on a usage basis, as in 15 cents per gigabyte
  
• Application agnostic

This learning guide will supply readers with a cloud storage case study, explain the difference between cloud storage and cloud service, and provide a look at the future of cloud storage.