Like SaaS, cloud computing has risen to provide organisations an alternative to managing IT inrfastructure. The cloud model is inherently service-oriented. Cloud computing architectures allow organisatons to "rent" capacity as they require it, alleviating the need to invest in redundant infrastructure. So-called "clouds" can be housed inside an organisation or managed by a third-party (the most common way).

Hype or reality?

Does the term "cloud computing" have any merit apart from a fancy way of saying hosting? The main difference between cloud computing and hosting is in a cloud environment an application should scale transparently depending on the demand at a particular time. For example, an e-commerce Web site may experience an heavy load during holiday seasons. A standard hosting service may "max out" its capacity under heavy load wheres an application hosted on a cloud service is designed to cater for higher demands.

Public and private

The cloud computing paradigm was first associated with large-scale public providers. More recently, however, organisations have been investing in new (and re-purposing existing) infrastructure to build "private clouds". Private clouds have the same properties of public clouds, but the data is not housed by a third-party. Linuxpeak supports applications hosted on both public and private clouds and advises organisations on which arrangement is most suitable for certain applications.

Linuxpeak's cloud

By leveraging the flexibility of virtualisation technology, Linuxpeak's cloud can be used to host demanding applications for less cost than dedicated server infrastructure. Linuxpeak gives organisations yet another option for scalable application hosting.