Cloud computing is the largest paradigm shift in computing
technology since the introduction of the personal computer. It opens the
door to a world of new possibilities for building, deploying, and
managing applications. Further, cloud-based software designs allow us to
abstract the computing infrastructure in such a way as to make
applications significantly more scalable, portable, and fault tolerant.
Perhaps equally important, applications that run either on the personal
computer or in the cloud are able to take advantage of multiple,
different cloud-based applications and services in order to provide
greater functionality, lower costs through "service re-use", access
virtually limitless data storage, and exploit virtually unlimited
compute resources.
In this section of Packetizer, we will explain the concepts of cloud
computing, explore the benefits of cloud computing technology, and
highlight some of the areas that need improvement. As always, you are
invited to contribute in order to help us in
our endeavor to be the definitive resource for information related to
cloud technologies.
