The term cloud commonly refers to the internet, which supports the delivery of services to users on demand from a provider’s servers rather than their own. Cloud service delivery enables scalable, easy access to applications and services with fewer resources. There is a distinction between public clouds and private clouds. Public clouds are multi-tenant environments in which organizations may consume applications, infrastructure, and services on a pay-per-use basis without the need to own the IT infrastructure. With public cloud services, organizations can add or remove users and services easily, thereby eliminating much of the management involved in the deployment of software and services. Private clouds, which may be housed onsite or in hosted environments, are single-tenant environments where the hardware, storage, and network are dedicated to a single organization. Private clouds are chosen by organizations that want the promise of greater control, privacy, and security, and they want to know exactly where their data resides.
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