Answer: A
Correct answer: Delivering computing services over the internet rather than from local hardware
Cloud computing delivers computing resources - servers, storage, databases, software - over the internet from a provider’s data centres, rather than from hardware the user owns and maintains. Its three service models are worth knowing. IaaS supplies raw infrastructure, virtual machines and storage, leaving the operating system and everything above to the customer. PaaS supplies a platform on which to run applications without managing the servers. SaaS supplies finished software over the web - Gmail and Google Docs are examples. The deployment models are public, private, hybrid and community. The attraction is that capacity can be added and removed on demand and paid for by use, turning a capital cost into an operating one and removing the need to size hardware for peak load. The concerns are dependence on a provider, the difficulty of moving between them, and the legal question of where data physically resides.