The Word on the cloud

Leslie Faughnan casts an eye over the evolution of cloud services

Cloud computing has evolved and matured from the early hype

Cloud computing has evolved and matured from the early hype, resolving into different strands – public, private, hybrid – and alternatives in service providers from small local hosting companies to the global giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others. Amazon Web Services is the public cloud market leader by a huge margin, with over half of the market, while Microsoft Azure is a firm but distant second.

The cloud model is conceptually ...