Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a combination of software and computing delivered as a networked service that provides a model for anytime access to a shared pool of applications and resources.  Computing is how a variety of computers come together and are connected through a communication network like the Internet.  Cloud computing relies on sharing information by delivering it to different services.  The cloud portion of cloud computing is the hardware, networks, storage, and services.  Cloud services can be how information is delivered and storage over the Internet.  The four characteristics of cloud computing are elasticity and its ability to scale up and down, self service provisioning, application programming interfaces, and billing and metering of service usage (pay as you go).

Cloud computing is offered in a variety of manners to satisfy its customers.  There are private clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds (both public and private).  Cloud computing is beginning to become a major part of companies because they have began to realize how beneficial it is to their company.  It can completely change the way people view their company as well as change the way they respond to their customers.  Many major companies such as Google and Amazon have already used cloud computing and found that it eliminated many major constraints that they had to previously deal with including space, time, and cost.

http://www.synergygs.com/Solutions/CloudServices/
http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/