It’s possible, but it seems that never has there been a more overused, misunderstood concept than the term “cloud.” However the mystery of this once elusive technology is being dispelled, proving to be alot more than a buzzword – and is actually being embraced as an alternative to running applications within a traditional corporate data center.

The hype around cloud began more than a year ago, but as IT delivery now must be available “as needed/when needed,” and all things IT are services that should be delivered in a real-time utility model, according to Tony Bishop, the founder and CEO of Adaptivity.

In speaking with several thought leaders here this week at Cloud Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., it has become evident that enterprises are moving toward a much more rapid adoption of cloud services, as they seek to lower costs and need a more agile infrastructure that is almost as simple as any other “out of the box” service to implement. Cloud may not be the answer for all, but it indeed is a viable solution – even a strategic decision for more companies – as the haze of cloud breaks open.

Abiquo, for example, a provider of next generation of cloud management solutions, takes a strategic approach to cloud solutions, rather than as a temporary tactical fix. The company provides virtualized infrastructure management. Based on open standards, Abiquo allows organizations of all sizes to improve business agility, mitigate risk and reduce costs.

I sat down with Pete Malcolm, CEO of Abiquo, at Cloud Expo, and he shared his thoughts on where the industry is going and how cloud has evolved from an abstract concept to more of a concrete solution for enterprises and SMEs alike.

Malcolm delivered the keynote speech on day 3 three of Cloud Expo, “What’s the Key Business Enabler for Virtualization 2.0? It’s a Matter of Policy…” and is the inventor of the term “Resource Cloud,” a concept which provides complete separation between physical infrastructure providers and virtual enterprise consumers, with substantial benefits to both.

Another key area of focus is on the hybrid cloud model, which combines the private and public cloud, and is the answer for organizations that want a self-service hybrid cloud. In fact, there is a newly formed coalition, the NRE Alliance – comprised of newScale, rPath, Eucalyptus Systems and MomentumSI – which is focused on bringing self-service private and hybrid clouds to the enterprise, as today’s enterprise IT organizations are under pressure to transform from bottleneck to business enabler.

While most industry experts agree that while cloud standards may not come to fruition anytime soon, some say the absence of them will actually encourage innovation.

Despite the advancements in cloud over the past 12 months, security concerns remain an obstacle toward enterprise adoption, according to technology research firm Gartner. Yet many cloud experts maintain that for long-term storage, your data may be more secure in the cloud than in your data center, particularly because AWS’ S3 storage service uses standard cloud data preservation, according to Amazon Web Services Security Architect Steve Riley.

Cloud Expo will come to New York City next year at the Javits Center from June 6-9, 2011.