At its most basic, the term "cloud storage" describes data storage that is made available as a service via a network. But that definition is so broad that it can encompass everything from Internet-based services that store a consumer's email and digital photographs to a major corporation's backup data.
In the interest of clarification, industry analysts who deal with corporate IT professionals have been refining the definition of cloud storage to incorporate the following characteristics:
Massively scalable
Not tied to a specific geographic location
Based on commodity components
Billed on a usage basis, as in 15 cents per gigabyte
Application agnostic
This learning guide will supply readers with a cloud storage case study, explain the difference between cloud storage and cloud service, and provide a look at the future of cloud storage.
Storage Technology Research Library
