What is Cloud Computing?
Try searching for "cloud computing" in google and you get 16,200,000 results.
There is lot of interest about Cloud Computing and what it means as it applies to different aspects of computing paradigm. It is more than just Software as a Service (SaaS), which relates to hosted on-demand delivery of applications.
Based on my understanding, Cloud Computing is about applications, platform, infrastructure, and storage resources being available as services.
There are many interesting discussions about what it is and what should be the definition of "Cloud".
Instead of trying to coin yet another definition of "Cloud", I tried to find a somewhat formal but plausible definition. This is the closest one I found. It is from an article published in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
"Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically re-configured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means of customized SLAs."
"A Break in the Clouds: Towards a Cloud Definition", Luis M. Vaquero, Luis Rodero-Merino , Juan Caceres, Maik Lindner, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 50 Volume 39, Number 1, January 2009
Oracle and Cloud Computing
Visit Oracle Cloud Computing Center to learn about Oracle's offering that allow enterprises to benefit from the developments taking place in the area of Cloud Computing.
