Business in the Cloud
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Business in the Cloud
Furht and Escalante (2010) define cloud services as a “new style of computing, in
which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service
over the Internet”. Especially the terms “dynamically scalable” and “virtualized
resources” are key aspects for this definition. The asset “scalable” refers to the fact
that cloud services can be adapted to the certain demand of a company or industry
sector, in other words if the variables for a business change – for example the
introduction of a new distribution channel – the service level can be changed as
well. Until now most companies hosted their own IT systems in house, “virtualized”
in this case refers to outsourced provision of services, for example web access to a
remote database, or on-demand services delivered through the Internet (Furht &
Escalante, 2010, pp. 3,8) & (Höllwarth, Cloud Migration, 2012, pp. 23-24) &
(
Sosinsky, 2010, p. 4).
Faltus (2013) describes cloud services and cloud computing as Software-As-A-
Service, Infrastructure-As-A-Service, or Platform-As-A-Service, which is accessible
on-demand with the required elasticity. This elasticity enables a user to consume,
what is requested. 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.
Seher (2013) regards cloud services as services by a provider, which are based on
a pay-per-use model and enable a complete Management Service for a defined
service. Thus a company does not need to pay for a server, but services.
Furthermore he does not regard cloud services as outsourcing, which would mean
to abandon part of the infrastructure, but as a service, which is used through clearly
defined Software License Agreements. Therefore cloud services can be regarded
as an addition to an existing IT infrastructure.
An enterprise is often limited by a rather fixed IT infrastructure, which can only be
expanded by spending financial resources for updated technology, servers, or the
development and customization of software. For the simple reason that the IT sector
is a fast evolving and vastly changing market, it is rather difficult for companies to
keep pace with it. SMEs often do not have sufficient financial assets to constantly
