The original cloud could probably be said to be the Internet. The basic idea of the cloud is that material used daily for a company, a class, or just personal use can be store outside of your computer and safely in another location; In the cloud!
 |
| http://lucaskrech.com/blog/index.php/2010/06/28/template-basics-clouds-and-skies/ |
There are three types of cloud computing:
PaaS, or Platform as a Service. This provides vendors with hardware and operating system. The benefits to this type is that the user is not responsible for the maintenance, upgrades or updates, or backups. Sometimes this type is referred to as Utility computing. Utility computing is basically the users software being run via the Internet.
DaaS, or Desktop as a Service. This provides an Operating system and apps. It is also scalable. which means, if you create one can ask the provider for 50 of the same thing the next day.
SaaS, or Software as a Service. This type provides everything. this is a per user per month subscription.
Cloud computing can be very beneficial to a business. It saves money and allows a company to run more apps or software than it could afford otherwise. Cloud computing isn't that new. We have used types of cloud computing when we used email. The data is stored somewhere else and doesn't take up memory on the device.
A manager does have to be cautious though. A company should never have so much of its data tied up into a program such as cloud computing that it would be devastating to either retrieve it or loss it all.
