Interest in anything related to the cloud is on the rise. 'Cloud washing" is just a term that refers to the marketing techniques employed by companies that are attempting to jump onto the cloud bandwagon, even when what they're offering isn't really cloud computing by definition. Essentially, marketing people can call anything "the cloud" and get attention. Since the definition of the cloud is fuzzy, and most consumers still think that anything delivered over the Internet is cloud computing, it's easy to pull this one off. Here's an example: A lot of vendors simply re-brand their existing products and deliver them over AWS, even while still retaining their original licensing model. I suppose if you stretch your imagination and squint your eyes, it may still be cloud computing, but they're not really living up to the "spirit" of what cloud computing is really meant to be. Another case in point: software as a service is really about deploying software from a common code base to an audience of multiple users. Once again, an ISV may be selling individual instances of a piece of software, with the only differentiator being that it is delivered over the Internet. Is it really cloud computing? Not in my opinion, and if that's how it's being sold to you, you're being short-changed. But that's how it's being marketed.