Definition of Terms
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web access to a remote database, or on-demand services delivered through the
Internet (Höllwarth, Cloud Migration, 2012, pp. 23-24) & (Sosinsky, 2010, p. 4). A
prerequisite to enable the provision of computing power, storage and services to an
undefined number of users, is an array of many servers. Cloud service providers
usually arrange such a structure in form of server farms. These server farms consist
of mainly cheap and quickly exchangeable hardware assets, which can easily be
extended, if a higher capacity is demanded (Faltus, 2013) & (Seher, 2013).
Furthermore, cloud services can be deployed as for example Software-As-A-
Service, Infrastructure-As-A-Service, or Platform-As-A-Service. Cloud services are
often based on a subscription plan, which means that there is a relatively small initial
investment required and replaced by recurring, assessable monthly costs (Faltus,
2013).
When speaking of services and computing using cloud technologies, it is often
referred to as merely cloud or synonymously for the Internet itself (Bufithis, 2010).
According to Gens (2008) “cloud computing is the IT foundation for cloud services
and it consists of technologies that enable cloud services”. In other words, cloud
computing is the driving factor that only allows cloud services to benefit from it by
providing the proper hardware, software, databases, and overall IT infrastructure.
Thus cloud services are enabled trough cloud computing.
However both the literature and experts do not distinguish between cloud services
and cloud computing in everyday life. It can be said that there is a fluent passage
between these two terms and thus they are often used synonymously (Faltus, 2013)
& (
Gens, 2008).
Application Programming Interface
An Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface for a programmer, in
which several specified functional routines are abstracted. Such a programming
interface consists of functions, constants, variables and provides commands,
routines and macros to support the programming procedure. A programmer is able
