Enterprise Cloud Computing

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Enterprise Cloud Computing Mean?

Enterprise cloud computing is the provision of cloud computing services to businesses.

Advertisements

This is in contrast to consumer-oriented cloud computing services. In enterprise cloud computing, individual companies and businesses rely on contracts with cloud providers or vendors to outsource different types of IT services.

Techopedia Explains Enterprise Cloud Computing

The category of enterprise cloud computing is a broad one. Businesses can use cloud computing vendors for any number of different information technology resources.

For example, one aspect of cloud computing is the general designation of Software as a Service (SaaS), where companies buy access to software programs that are delivered over the web.

There are other types of similar cloud computing services like platform as a service, infrastructure as a service and communications as a service where different kinds of services are provided in similar ways.

The benefits of enterprise cloud computing are partly related to security and cost. Businesses can take advantage of cloud vendors with superior security methods, while controlling overhead by only using the services they need at any given time.

Instead of costly hardware procurement and installation, companies can simply order services for as long as they need them. These sophisticated business contracts are often facilitated through something called a service level agreement (SLA) that spells out exactly what the cloud provider is offering to the client business, and what the client can expect.

Many experts predict a dramatic rise in enterprise cloud computing. That means that more of the networking hardware and other resources used to support business processes will be acquired by cloud providers, rather than individual businesses.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.