Cloud computing overview

Straight-forward explanantion of cloud computing. Covers infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS) at a high level as well as the main characteristics of cloud services and issues. Cloud services:

  • are elastic, can be bought by the hour, month, etc
  • are flexible and scalable
  • help organsations avoid capital expenditure

Agree with the above but the last one is a benefit not a characteristic.

While security is always an issue, a useful analogy to consider is that of money in the bank. We’re more comfortable with holding cash in the bank rather than at home for instance. Simply because banks invest much more in security than a single homeowner ever would. Same goes for data stored on an organsation’s server compared to a specialist cloud service provider

Zaheer Ismail