cloud
computing simply refers to accessing computing resources via a different location than your local
computer. In most situations today, you’re accessing these resources through the Internet.
As an example, if you use web-based email such as Gmail, you’re using cloud computing. More
specifically, the web-based mail is a Software as a Service cloud computing service. You know that
you’re accessing your email via the Internet, but you really don’t know where the physical server
hosting your account is located. It could be in a data center in the middle of Virginia, tucked away in
Utah, or just about anywhere else in the world.
Cloud computing is very useful for heavily utilized systems and networks. As an example,
consider the biggest shopping day in the United States—Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,
when retailers go into the black. Several years ago, Amazon.com had so much traffic during the
Thanksgiving weekend that its servers could barely handle it. The company learned its lesson, though.
The next year, it used cloud computing to rent access to servers specifically for the Thanksgiving
weekend, and, despite increased sales, it didn’t have any problems.
As many great innovators do, Amazon didn’t look on this situation as a problem, but rather an
opportunity. If it needed cloud computing for its heavily utilized system, other companies probably
had the same need. Amazon now hosts cloud services to other organizations via its Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service. Amazon EC2 combines virtualization with cloud computing
and they currently provide a wide variety of services via Amazon EC2.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• No servers, no software, no maintenance team, no HVAC
• Someone else handles the platform, you handle the product
• Salesforce.com
Software as a Service (SaaS)
• On-demand software
• No local installation
• Google Mail
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Sometimes called Hardware as a Service (HaaS)
• Outsource your equipment
• Web server and email server providers
computing simply refers to accessing computing resources via a different location than your local
computer. In most situations today, you’re accessing these resources through the Internet.
As an example, if you use web-based email such as Gmail, you’re using cloud computing. More
specifically, the web-based mail is a Software as a Service cloud computing service. You know that
you’re accessing your email via the Internet, but you really don’t know where the physical server
hosting your account is located. It could be in a data center in the middle of Virginia, tucked away in
Utah, or just about anywhere else in the world.
Cloud computing is very useful for heavily utilized systems and networks. As an example,
consider the biggest shopping day in the United States—Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,
when retailers go into the black. Several years ago, Amazon.com had so much traffic during the
Thanksgiving weekend that its servers could barely handle it. The company learned its lesson, though.
The next year, it used cloud computing to rent access to servers specifically for the Thanksgiving
weekend, and, despite increased sales, it didn’t have any problems.
As many great innovators do, Amazon didn’t look on this situation as a problem, but rather an
opportunity. If it needed cloud computing for its heavily utilized system, other companies probably
had the same need. Amazon now hosts cloud services to other organizations via its Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service. Amazon EC2 combines virtualization with cloud computing
and they currently provide a wide variety of services via Amazon EC2.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• No servers, no software, no maintenance team, no HVAC
• Someone else handles the platform, you handle the product
• Salesforce.com
Software as a Service (SaaS)
• On-demand software
• No local installation
• Google Mail
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Sometimes called Hardware as a Service (HaaS)
• Outsource your equipment
• Web server and email server providers
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