One of the areas of confusion is the definition of Cloud Computing. There are many definitions of Cloud Computing out there. Here is one of them that seems to represent the most commonly held view. It’s from the National Institute of Standards (NIST) and seems to be gaining in popularity, not only in the US, but also the rest of the world as well.The definition is essentially about “on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources.”Breaking it down, cloud computing is composed of:5 essential characteristics3 service models4 deployment modelsThe 5 essential characteristics are key:On demand self-service – provisioning, monitoring, management controlResource pooling – implies sharing and a level of abstraction between consumers and servicesRapid elasticity – the ability to quickly scale up/down as neededMeasured service – metering utilization for either internal chargeback (private cloud) or external billing (public cloud)Broad network access – typically means access through a browser on any networked deviceI’ll cover the 3 service models and 4 deployment models on the next few slides.