Cloud Computing Providers

Abstract

Cloud computing is popular today because of the reliable services provided by major companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace and Terremark. In order to provide reliable cloud computing service the provider must invest large sums in infrastructure. Their architecture includes several redundancies. Each of these global service providers have several data centers spread all over the world. These data centers help cloud consumers meet their governmental requirements that cloud data must reside within the country or in the region. Moreover, these distributed data centers facilitate storage redundancy and help with low latency response. Also, these providers offer some or all of the three types of cloud services—SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Besides these cloud service providers (CSPs), there are also several niche cloud service providers such as Salesforce, Apple, VMware, Dropbox and SoftLayer. These companies focus on specific services such as Customer Relations Management (CRM), music distribution, virtualization, storage and bare metal servers. Another set of businesses focus on providing third party coordination of service for businesses needing cloud service. In this chapter we describe the services offered by the major cloud service providers, niche cloud service providers and highlight the important role that these third party facilitators provide and how small and medium sized businesses could benefit.