Cloud Technologies Services
Cloud computing services are changing how businesses and public institutions use information technology. Today cloud services are available to meet most any IT need. Although there's great variety among cloud computing services, all such services have certain basic features and benefits in common, and all can be categorized into a few basic cloud service types.
Cloud Computing Services Features and Benefits
By now most people have heard about cloud computing services, but what does cloud mean? While cloud services may vary in their particulars, a cloud computing definition identifies the core features and benefits that are common across all clouds.
From the perspective of service users, cloud computing services have these main features:
- Hosted and maintained by the provider. The cloud hosting provider purchases, hosts, and maintains the necessary hardware and software in their own facility. Service users avoid the capital expenditures and maintenance headaches that they would have if they developed the service themselves on-premise.
- Self-service through a web interface. Service users can initiate specific service functions, and increase or decrease their service usage level, though a web interface with little or no interaction with the service provider.
- Pay for use. Service users pay only for the amount of service that they use. This can result in substantial cost savings compared to the traditional approach of developing on-site IT capacities geared toward maximum usage scenarios, and then having that capacity be under-utilized much of the time.
- Near-limitless scalability. Cloud computing services providers typically have the infrastructure to deliver their service at massive scale. For cloud service users, that means that the cloud can easily accommodate business growth or periodic spikes in service usage.
