Cloud computing is a methodology of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet or a private network. Users do not have to possess knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the infrastructure of the “cloud” and it’s technology.
The concept of cloud computing generally encompasses a combination of the following:
- IaaS (infrastructure as a service)
- SaaS (software as a service)
- Paas (platform as a service)
- Other recent technologies that provide common business applications online which are accessed via web browser (eg. Google Apps), while the software and data reside and execute on the servers.
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the transparency of the Internet and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it encapsulates.