6. Common features of different cloud models

Cloud Computing takes advantage of a number of characteristics to provide services under very advantageous technical and economic conditions. It's a bit like producing electricity. It's in the interest of most companies and individuals to use suppliers whose business it is to guarantee reliability and the best economic conditions. Common characteristics generally include the following.

• Gigantic infrastructures

  The Amazon S3 online storage system (figure 2 ) has grown from 14 billion objects in January 2008 to 450 billion objects in July 2011, enabling extremely low prices: around 0.1 E per gigabyte per month.

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