Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing

From Executive Summary:

"Cloud Computing, the long held dream of computing as a utility, has the potential to transform a large part of the IT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased. Developers with innovative ideas for new Internet services no longer require the large capital outlays in hardware to deploy their service or the human expense to operate it.....The elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, is unprecendent in the history of IT. "

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