Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing

The Berkeley Report identifies three new aspects in the Cloud Computing.

1. The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand, thereby eliminating the need for Cloud Computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning.

2. The elimination of an up-front commitment by Cloud users, thereby allowing companies to start small and increase hardware resources only when there is an increase in their needs.

3. The ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-term basis as needed (e.g., processors by the hour and storage by the day) and release them as needed, thereby rewarding conservation by letting machines and storage go when they are no longer useful.

They argue that the construction and operation of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer datacenters at lowcost locations was the key necessary enabler of Cloud Computing.

Click here to read the report.