Cloud Computing Essay

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Cloud computing is a very ambiguous term as everyone seems to have a different definition of what it means. One definition was suggested by Simon Wardley and Connonical (2009) who believed cloud computing to be a “generic term used to describe the disruptive transformation in IT towards a service based economy driven by a set of economic, cultural and technological transformations”. As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud" is a familiar term, but when it is combined with the term computing, the meaning gets broader and much harder to explain. Some individuals define cloud computing as an updated version of utility computing which started up in the 1960’s while others believe cloud computing is a term that defines a much larger range of services that include Saas (software as a service), platform as a service, MSP (managed service providers)
 and more. Cloud computing came into the spotlight when firms started thinking about a way to increase capacity or add capabilities instantly without investing in new infrastructure, training new employees, or licensing new software. Therefore it can be argued that cloud computing includes any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that extends a firms existing IT capabilities.
Cloud computing is a fairly recent term however many of the functions that go under the branch of cloud computing have been around far longer then the term ‘ the cloud’ has. For example, Salesforce.com can be seen as an example of cloud computing where they have provided SaaS for over a decade, which run as an application on the Internet, far before the term ‘cloud computing’ was mentioned. However, on the other side of the spectrum there is the Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud), which is a pl...

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...etween SaaS and MSP in the sense that this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with.

In conclusion, cloud computing includes many services in its definition. Referring to Larry Ellisons quote, it can be argued that he was correct in stating that we have redefined everything that we already do, since services such as SaaS and MSP had already been in play years ago. However, the term cloud computing is unique in the sense that it suggests that all of these services are integrated with each other rather than being separate entities. Therefore, cloud computing compromises of many functions some of which are old but the difference lies on the fact that cloud computing relies on the sharing of resources so that in a sense economies of scale can be achieved and converged infrastructure and shared services can be taken advantage of.

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