Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services -- from applications to storage and processing power -- typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers, companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider. One benefit of using cloud-computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it. In turn, providers of cloud-computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

​

Cloud-computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking and processing power, through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications. Pretty much any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud – even quantum computing.

​

Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for a significant chunk of all IT spending, while spending on traditional, in-house IT slides as computing workloads continue to move to the cloud, whether that is public cloud services offered by vendors or private clouds built by enterprises themselves.