Information Technology: It's in the Clouds
Joseph P. Bofill
CIS/207
May 22, 2013
Professor Fred Bennett
Information Technology: It's in the Clouds
As business organizations continue to work at a fevered pitch and the demand for more efficient and cost effective ways to complete everyday business grows, many Information Technology (IT) departments within these companies are looking to the cloud (Cloud Computing) for answers.
Simply put, Cloud Computing is anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. The concept of the cloud system service is being able to handle and store huge amounts of data files as if you had an enormous hard drive, removing the requirement to purchase more hardware or software within the business organization. These services are loosely divided into three distinct categories: Platform-as-a- Service (PaaS), a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider's infrastructure, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Web Services provide virtual server instance API to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product, and interacts with the user through a front-end portal.
There are three characteristics cloud service have that separates itself from the traditional way of data being hosted. It can be sold on demand, by the hour or by the minute; it is flexible or “elastic” – business organizations can have as much or as little of a service as they want when they want it. The service is managed fully by the service provider (all the business organization needs is Internet access and a personal computer). Because of improved innovations and the way computing is being distributed, along with the improved access to the higher speeds of the Internet and a weaker economy, interest in cloud computing has grown immensely. Kim DeCarlis Vice President of Corporate Marketing stated, “The...