Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a major step toward organizing all aspects of computation as a public utility service. It embraces concepts such as software as a service and platform as a service, including services for workflow facilities, application design and development, deployment and hosting services, data integration, and management of software. The cloud platform increases in importance as our industry makes the phase change from in-house data management to cloud-hosted data management to improve efficiency and focus on core businesses. However, like any new technology, there are formidable problems, from performance issues to security and privacy, from metadata management to massively parallel execution.