CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
There is a great deal of debate about what cloud computing is, or is not. Hayes (2008) defined “cloud computing as a kind of computing which is highly scalable and use virtualized resources that can be shared by the users. Users do not need any background knowledge of the services before using it. Moreover, a user on the internet can communicate with many servers at the same time and these servers exchange information with one another. Basically, data and adoption in the cloud are available through the internet; it can also be accessed from everywhere and from any device with internet connectivity.
Stroh et al, (2009) defined
“cloud computing as “the computing software and services that can be accessed
via the internet rather than residing on a desktop or internal server.” Gartner
(2012) defined cloud computing as “a style of computing in which massively
scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to
external customers using internet technologies. “In various presentations
Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) broke this into four different types of
cloud computing, namely: Infrastructure, Platform, Applications and Services.
Infrastructure is buying Space/ times on external servers, Examples are
Amazons, A3, and Bungee. Platform on the other hand, is an existing software
platform in which one can build its own application on, such as Facebook. While
Application is a software application accessed with a Web browser, examples are
Google Docs, Salesforce.com, whereas, Service is a ready to use services
accessed with a Web browser such as ADP. Mell and Gance (2011) defined each of
the
three services models thus: Software as a Service (SaaS) which allows users to use the provider’s applications on a cloud through a web browser, while Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows users to deploy their own applications on the provider’s cloud infrastructure under the provider’s environment. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows users to control and manage computing resources.
Cloud computing can transform the way information systems are built and services delivered. This provides library with an opportunity to extend its impact to its users anywhere anytime. Anyone connected to the internet is probably using some type of cloud computing on a regular basis. Whether they are using Google’s Gmail, Organizing photos on Flickr or searching the Web with Bing they are engaged in cloud environment. As Geoffrey (2013) pointed out, the interesting thing about cloud computing is that it did not start as a technology for the business enterprise, but was driven by the public with services like Facebook and Flickr.
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