Cloud Nine, Are We There Yet?

Cloud computing is a paradigm that makes the notion of utility computing a reality. Instead of Information Technology (IT) organizations investing in all of the hardware, software and infrastructure necessary to meet their business needs, cloud computing makes access to hardware, software and infrastructure available through the internet, generally utilizing a pay for use model. Basically cloud computing allows an organization to adopt a different economic model for meeting IT needs by reducing capital investments and increasing operational investments, a model which is likely to offer cost savings to many organizations.