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Top1. Introduction
Cloud computing comprises the provision of services, such as shared resources, software, and on-demand information, over the internet. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines it as a ‘model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources, such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services, that can be fast provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction (Mell & Grance, 2011). McKinsey suggests that ‘using clouds for computing tasks promises a revolution in IT similar to the birth of the web and e-commerce (Soni & Gupta, 2012).
Figure 1.
Cloud Computing Services (Zhang et al., 2010)
The worldwide growth of spending on cloud computing services emphasises the significance of the technology and reflects its increased prominence in the field of IT. Nowadays, enterprises are reshaping their business models to benefit from cloud computing and to reduce costs. In addition, decreased operational costs allow for increased innovation. Cloud computing not only reduces the number of employees needed but also provides other features that make it attractive to business owners (Zhang et al., 2010). For example, cloud computing uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so it requires no up-front investment. Service providers do not need to invest in infrastructure to benefit from cloud computing. In addition, cloud computing lowers operating costs. Resources in a cloud environment can be rapidly allocated and de-allocated on demand, so service providers no longer need to provision capacities according to peak load. This provides great savings since resources can be released to save on operating costs when service demand is low (Zhang et al., 2010).
Top3. Overview Of Cloud Computing
This section presents a general overview of cloud computing including its definition and characteristics.