By Michael Brown 1

It’s been called over-hyped, the greatest technological innovation of the last hundred years and everything in between. We’re talking of course about the cloud.

Few tech topics have elicited such memorable quotes as that of the cloud. Here are seven in particular that we could read over and over again. Some are insightful, some are inspiration, some are tactical and some are just plain absurd.

Take a look:

“The problem with creating a ‘cloud strategy’ is that, by placing your strategy focus on the technology rather than on your business, it's easy to lose focus and assume that adopting cloud-based offerings is a sure path to business benefit.” – Randy Heffner

“There’s no way that company exists in a year.” – Tom Siebel, founder of software firm Siebel Systems, speaking about Salesforce.com

“What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?” – Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle Corp.

“Just like water from the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off quickly as needed. Like at the water company, there is a team of dedicated professionals making sure the service provided is safe, secure and available on a 24/7 basis. When the tap isn’t on, not only are you saving water, but you aren’t paying for resources you don’t currently need.” – Vivek Kundra, CIO in Obama administration

“In the pre-cloud ERA, the cost of building software was so high that we often have to define a scope and leave out functionality which we feel doesn't fetch the ROI for automation. Cloud makes whatever that was previously left out of scope as candidate for automation now! Thanks to simplification, access and affordability brought by IaaS and PaaS.” – Suresh Sambandam, Founder & CEO OrangeScape

“We were one of the first states to move most of our email into the cloud. That’s gone really, really well; I think it’s exceeded expectations. When we think about doing major information technology projects in this state, the default is cloud.” — Mike Powell, CIO of Maryland

“If you want to be a viable cloud vendor selling products, you have no choice – your product must be multitenant in order to survive in the cloud world.” – Alok Misra, Cofounder & Principal – Navatar Group

Got a favorite cloud quote of your own? Be sure to share in the comment section below.