Cloud-computing platforms such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform, and Google App Engine have given many businesses flexible access to computing resources, ushering in an era in which, among other things, startups can operate with much lower infrastructure costs. Instead of having to buy or rent hardware, users can pay for only the processing power that they actually use and are free to use more or less as their needs change.
Opening the Cloud
November 6, 2008