What is Cloud Computing?

The Fifth Generation of Computing (after Mainframe, Personal Computer, Client-Server Computing, and the web)

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-oriented architecture and utility computing.

IaaS, Paas, and SaaS: The core of cloud computing

The cloud is about providing services—Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS). Another way to look at it: The cloud is about providing a pool of computing resources that all operate together, effectively as a single computer.

Why to move to a Cloud Model?

Business Agility:- A cloud model gives you the ability to respond to business demands more effectively
and helps ensure employees have on-demand access to critical business information, customers, partners, and each
other, using nearly any device, from virtually anywhere.The result: They can give priority to the most critical
business tasks first.

Resource Agility:- The management burden of anticipating and building out excess capacity IT
infrastructure decreases. The result—less management,maintenance, and deployment time, with the additional
benefit of greater scalability to more easily handle peaks in demand.

Low Costs:- From a financial perspective, you can manage costs as a capital expense or an operational
expense depending on what works best for your business.

Smaller Footprint:- At the same time, using off-premises IT infrastructure has the additional value
of decreasing your environmental impact through a reduction in the physical resources required to run
on-premises systems.