The age of cloud computing

Grazed from ISO. Author: Elizabeth Gasiorowski.

Cloud computing is a new way of delivering, consuming and producing IT resources via the Internet. Forging new standards work will only boost the potential and make the technology even more promising. Cloud computing is quite possibly the hottest, most discussed and often misunderstood concept in information technology (IT) today. This revolutionary concept has reached unexpected heights in the last decade and is recognized by governments and private-sector organizations as major game-changing technology.

Organizations and individuals alike are keen to store and process their data in the cloud, access from anywhere applications and important information maintained in the cloud – and do this faster and at lower cost than through conventional means. Commercial enterprises and public-sector organizations are eager to gain promised efficiency and agility, while the average user desires the cloud’s ubiquity and flexibility. And, above all, everyone wants to reduce cost…

But what exactly is it? Until recently, most software programs ran on your personal computer. In simple terms, an individual ran applications on his/her personal computer and each enterprise had racks of servers to support its operations. With cloud computing, they now run on large networks of remote servers that enable the sharing of data-processing tasks, centralized storage and online access to computer services – all over the Internet. We spoke to Donald Deutsch, Chair of joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, subcommittee SC 38, Cloud computing and distributed platforms, about just what cloud computing is, what the benefits and risks are, and how standards can help…

Read more from the source @ http://www.iso.org/iso/news.htm?refid=Ref1920