Today is the 10th anniversary of the start of the International Space Station. Back in 1998 the first piece of the station was launched into orbit, commencing an ambitious exercise of international collaboration.

Space exploration is an expensive business. You need access to specialist equipment, as well as masses of computing power to track and guide your mission. But imagine this: supposing NASA (and other space agencies) were to throw open their doors and allow would-be space explorers to make use of their technology and infrastructure.

Okay, there might be limits on what they could use (and sometimes costs), but imagine what could happen if any would-be space entrepreneur could get his or her hands on technology of a quality and scale that would allow them to build and launch their own rockets and space stations. Sounds fanciful?

Well, it’s only an analogy. What I’m really keen to talk about here is about getting into the metaphorical world of ‘cloud computing‘. If you’ve come across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google’s developer-focused resources, you’ve already met the world’s biggest providers of cloud computing services.

Put simply, cloud computing allows you to build and host software, as well as store data (images, files etc) without having to own your own operating systems. Just by having access to the Internet, you - and your co-workers and customers - can run applications, operate business processes and access services, without the need for owning and managing the infrastructure yourself.

In a sense, it’s as liberating as being freed from an earth-bound existence. Wherever you are, as long as you can connect to the web, all the data storage and computing power you want is there at your fingertips. No more need to worry about capacity, maintenance and obsolescence, somebody else will do that for you (okay, at a price, depending on what you want).

Not only can owning your own systems and data servers be expensive and time consuming, few companies can afford to invest in the sort of infrastructure that allows them to scale up when demand surges. Consider a situation where you suddenly had a million customers wanting to download pdfs from your site, or view an online video; if you’re just your own little island of storage and processing, you’re going to get clogged up pretty quickly.

Which is where access to bigger providers comes in. But the paradigm of cloud-working also goes for smaller providers offering outsourced Internet services. We would say this, of course, but why would you want to maintain your own creaking infrastructure - often difficult for staff to access - when someone else can host and deliver the data and applications you need across the web?

And here-in lies some of the complexity of the ‘cloud’ metaphor. In truth, the movement we’re talking about here is about ‘clouds’ - some bigger than others; some with different properties than others. But the underlying principle is the same: access to technology that an individual organisation (especially small and medium sized ones) could only dream about.

It’s a world that’s enabling developers and micro-business to create and deliver a host of new online services, secure in the knowledge that is has a platform that is powerful and scalable if demand hits a spike. NASA might not be opening the doors to such people and organisations; but the infrastructure providers of the cloud certainly are.