Cloud Computing Services

Cloud Computing Services provide information technology (IT) as a service over the Internet or dedicated network, with delivery on demand, and payment based on usage. Cloud computing services range from full applications and development platforms, to servers, storage, and virtual desktops.

 

Who uses cloud computing services and why?
 
Corporate and government entities utilize cloud computing services to address a variety of application and infrastructure needs such as CRM, database, compute, and data storage. Unlike a traditional IT environment, where software and hardware are funded up front by department and implemented over a period of months, cloud computing services deliver IT resources in minutes to hours and align costs to actual usage. As a result, organizations have greater agility and can manage expenses more efficiently. Similarly, consumers utilize cloud computing services to simplify application utilization, store, share, and protect content, and enable access from any web-connected device.

How cloud computing services work
 
Cloud computing services have several common attributes:

• Virtualization- cloud computing utilizes server and storage virtualization extensively to allocate/reallocate resources rapidly
• Multi-tenancy -resources are pooled and shared among multiple users to gain economies of scale
• Network-access - resources are accessed via web-browser or thin client using a variety of networked devices (computer, tablet, smartphone)
• On demand - resources are self-provisioned from an online catalogue of pre-defined configurations
• Elastic -resources can scale up or down, automatically
• Metering/chargeback -resource usage is tracked and billed based on service arrangement