Cloud Computing – Outsourcing 2.0 or a new Business Model for IT Provisioning?

The term cloud computing is sometimes used to refer to a new paradigm – some authors even speak of a new technology – that flexibly offers IT resources and services over the Internet. Gartner market research sees cloud computing as a so-called “emerging technology” on its way to the hype. When looking at the number of searches for the word pair “cloud computing” undertaken with the Google search engine one can get an imagination of the high interest on the topic. Even terms like “outsourcing”, “Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)” or “grid computing” have already been overtaken.