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Cloud Computing

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Definition

Cloud computing refers to a service-oriented computing methodology in which computational, networking, and storage capabilities, and software services are virtualized and contracted for via Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), through well-defined interfaces that are exercised via a network connection.

Historical Background

Cloud computing has its origins in two separate but related technological developments that emerged in the commercial sector during the 1990s. The first is very-large-scale e-commerce as evinced by “Internet-scale” companies such as Google, eBay, and Yahoo! These companies fielded proprietary web-facing infrastructure designed to support millions of simultaneous, anonymized users via the common carrier Internet.

The second development, pioneered by the company Salesforce.com, was “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) – the credentialed, and for-fee access to proprietary software via programmatic web-facing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Until that time,...

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Correspondence to Chandra Krintz .

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© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Krintz, C. (2018). Cloud Computing. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_2206

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