VMware White Paper Sample

To understand the different types of cloud computing, it can be helpful to look at what the customer actually purchases. There are three different use cases for cloud computing solutions:

1. Application and Information Clouds – Sometimes referred to as software-as-a-service, this type of cloud provides a wide range of business-level services and information to end users. Applications in this space include salesforce.com, Expedia.com and Google Apps.

2. Development Clouds – Sometimes referred to as platform-as- a-service, cloud development platforms enable application authoring and provide runtime environments. Examples of software development clouds include Engine Yard, CohesiveFT, Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine.

3. Infrastructure Clouds – Also referred to as elastic compute clouds or infrastructure-as-a-service, this type of cloud provides virtual hardware capacity to organizations on an elastic basis. Examples of cloud infrastructure providers include Terremark Infinistructure, Amazon Web Services, Hosting.com and Savvis.