The term Cloud Computing is a rumor that recently appeared in IT literature. Most suppliers immediately introduced the term in their offerings, which doesn't make it easy to understand. The aim of this dossier is to provide an overview of this technology, and to propose an experiment that can be carried out in just a few minutes...
The reference architecture proposed by NIST (National Standard Institute
http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/index.cfm
) is generally used by most players.
The operational definition used by NIST is as follows:
"Cloud Computing is an IT model that enables easy, on-demand network access to a shared set of configurable computing resources (servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or interaction with the service provider."
The essential features, the different service models and the key issue of security for Cloud Computing systems are discussed.
This is followed by the emergence of standards and an attempt to assess the economic benefits of Cloud Computing technologies.
An experimentation of Cloud technologies using Amazon Cloud is proposed.