Some names might be surprising, as they may be better known as content providers or consumer sites. Here are just a few of the major players:. Dropbox : A file-hosting service offering storage, file synchronization and client software, the company started in It allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which the company then synchronizes so that it appears to be the same folder with the same contents regardless of which computer is used to view it.
Files placed in this folder also are accessible through a website and mobile phone applications. Amazon : Considered one of the innovators in cloud computing since it began offering services in , Amazon has thousands of small business and individual users, as well as customers such as The New York Times and Eli Lilly.
Google : In what might have been a strike again Microsoft, the Internet search giant launched Google Apps in Customers include small businesses and colleges such as Northwestern University. Microsoft : The tech giant has made its Windows operating system available with cloud computing through the Azure program. Microsoft also offers various business services. Customers using the program include Epicor and Micro Focus.
Customers include financial services, media and health firms as well as retail companies. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service technologyreview.
Skip to Content. Proof of concept: George Favaloro poses with a Compaq business plan. Cloud 1. He poses at the offices of NetCentric, in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the late s. Keep Reading. Most Popular. By Will Douglas Heaven archive page. By Clive Thompson archive page. By Patrick Howell O'Neill archive page. By Cat Ferguson archive page. Research by Oracle found that two thirds of IaaS users said using online infrastructure makes it easier to innovate, had cut their time to deploy new applications and services and had significantly cut on-going maintenance costs.
However, half said IaaS isn't secure enough for most critical data. Platform-as-a-Service PaaS is the next layer up -- as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers this will also include the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top of: that could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.
Microsoft's multitude of Business and Enterprise editions -- licensed as monthly or annual subscriptions -- offer more advanced feature sets than the Home and Personal editions, with collaborative applications and management tools designed for meeting enterprise security and compliance challenges. Software-as-a-Service SaaS is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis.
The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis. SaaS spending is made up of applications and system infrastructure software, and IDC said that spending will be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending through The exact benefits will vary according to the type of cloud service being used but, fundamentally, using cloud services means companies not having to buy or maintain their own computing infrastructure.
No more buying servers, updating applications or operating systems, or decommissioning and disposing of hardware or software when it is out of date, as it is all taken care of by the supplier. For commodity applications, such as email, it can make sense to switch to a cloud provider, rather than rely on in-house skills.
A company that specializes in running and securing these services is likely to have better skills and more experienced staff than a small business could afford to hire, so cloud services may be able to deliver a more secure and efficient service to end users. Using cloud services means companies can move faster on projects and test out concepts without lengthy procurement and big upfront costs, because firms only pay for the resources they consume.
This concept of business agility is often mentioned by cloud advocates as a key benefit. The ability to spin up new services without the time and effort associated with traditional IT procurement should mean that is easier to get going with new applications faster. And if a new application turns out to be a wildly popular the elastic nature of the cloud means it is easier to scale it up fast. For a company with an application that has big peaks in usage, for example that is only used at a particular time of the week or year, it may make financial sense to have it hosted in the cloud, rather than have dedicated hardware and software laying idle for much of the time.
Moving to a cloud hosted application for services like email or CRM could remove a burden on internal IT staff, and if such applications don't generate much competitive advantage, there will be little other impact. Moving to a services model also moves spending from capex to opex, which may be useful for some companies. Cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of computing, just as renting is not always cheaper than buying in the long term.
If an application has a regular and predictable requirement for computing services it may be more economical to provide that service in-house. Some companies may be reluctant to host sensitive data in a service that is also used by rivals. Moving to a SaaS application may also mean you are using the same applications as a rival, which may make it hard to create any competitive advantage if that application is core to your business.
While it may be easy to start using a new cloud application, migrating existing data or apps to the cloud may be much more complicated and expensive. And it seems there is now something of a shortage in cloud skills with staff with DevOps and multi-cloud monitoring and management knowledge in particularly short supply. In one recent report a significant proportion of experienced cloud users said that they thought upfront migration costs ultimately outweigh the long-term savings created by IaaS.
Cloud computing tends to shift spending from capital expenditure CapEx to operating expenditure OpEx as companies buy computing as a service rather than in the form of physical servers. This may allow companies to avoid large increases in IT spending which would traditionally be seen with new projects; using the cloud to make room in the budget may be easier than going to the CFO and looking for more money.
Of course, this doesn't mean that cloud computing is always or necessarily cheaper that keeping applications in house; for applications with a predictable and stable demand for computing power may be cheaper from a processing power point of view at least to keep in-house. To build a business case for moving systems to the cloud you first need to understand what your existing infrastructure actually costs. There's a lot to factor in: obvious things like the cost of running a data centers, and extras such as leased lines.
The cost of physical hardware -- servers and details of specifications like CPUs, cores and RAM, plus the cost of storage. You'll also need to calculate the cost of applications -- whether you plan to dump them, re-hosting them in the cloud unchanged, completely rebuilding them for the cloud or buying an entirely new SaaS package each option will have different cost implications. The cloud business case also needs to include people costs often second only to the infrastructure costs and more nebulous concepts like the benefit of being able to provide new services faster.
Any cloud business case should also factor in the potential downsides, including the risk of being locked into one vendor for your tech infrastructure. It's hard to get figures on how companies are adopting cloud services although the market is clearly growing rapidly. However, it may be that figures on adoption of cloud depend on who you talk to inside an organisation.
Not all cloud spending will be driven centrally by the CIO: cloud services are relatively easy to sign up for, so business managers can start using them, and pay out of their own budget, without needing to inform the IT department.
This can enable businesses to move faster but also can create security risks if the use of apps is not managed. Adoption will also vary by application: cloud-based email -- is much easier to adopt than a new finance system for example. Research by Spiceworks suggests that companies are planning to invest in cloud-based communications and collaboration tools and back-up and disaster recovery, but are less likely to be investing in supply chain management. Certainly many companies remain concerned about the security of cloud services, although breaches of security are rare.
How secure you consider cloud computing to be will largely depend on how secure your existing systems are. In-house systems managed by a team with many other things to worry about are likely to be more leaky than systems monitored by a cloud provider's engineers dedicated to protecting that infrastructure. However, concerns do remain about security, especially for companies moving their data between many cloud services, which has leading to growth in cloud security tools , which monitor data moving to and from the cloud and between cloud platforms.
These tools can identify fraudulent use of data in the cloud, unauthorised downloads, and malware. The country of origin of cloud services is also worrying some organisations see Is geography irrelevant when it comes to cloud computing? Companies do not need to make high-cost investments for providing, installing and maintaining their own computer systems, which in turn makes it possible to plan the availability of the applications and their actual costs.
It is still generally accepted as the fundamental definition and names three principal service models:. IaaS — Infrastructure as a Service The customer rents an external infrastructure for its applications, data and operating system. The provider takes care of installing the servers, setting up and running the networks and storing the data. PaaS — Platform as a Service Offers the same services as IaaS but goes one step further: As well as the servers, storage space and networks, the provider also supplies what are known as middleware applications — i.
The customer rents the use of the servers and the integrated tools. The provider is responsible for installing, configuring and operating the interface.
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