ABSTRACT

This entry examines some of the web services delivered from the cloud. It reviews Communication-as-a-Service (CaaS), and explains some of the advantages of using CaaS. Infrastructure is also a service in cloud land, and there are many variants on how infrastructure is managed in cloud environments. When vendors outsource Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), it relies heavily on modern on-demand computing technology and high-speed networking. It provides some vendors who provide Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), such as https://Amazon.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Amazon.com, with their elastic cloud platform. The entry then presents implementation issues, the characteristics, benefits, and architectural maturity level of the service. Outsourced hardware environments (called platforms) are available as Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS). The case study of Mosso (Rackspace) is offered to examine key characteristics of a PaaS implementation.