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Technological growth over the years have facilitated enterprises to move ahead from working with few desktops to a more advanced and networked environment well connected with a number of computer systems, workstations, laptops, printers and storage devices across the globally distributed offices. Nevertheless to combat the aggressively competitive environment and meet the requirements of globalization enterprises had to constantly upgrade their infrastructure. Further, with the business world communicating, storing all sales data, operational strategies and large volumes of marketing data digitally, brought in the need for the larger storage devices and servers. The vastness of the infrastructure required these to be either housed exclusive areas within the premises or in different locations. Such a centralized repository for storage, management and dissemination of data are referred to as data centers and maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure led to operational overheads. However, as technology advanced, the business world was abuzz with cloud computing services. Wikipedia defines the term Cloud computing services as "the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet)." In other words, cloud computing services provide enterprises with easy and scalable access to computing resources and IT services. Data centers, the technology workhorse for the enterprise offering shared hosting services could now offer their clientele relocation of their corporate network to the cloud. Further by using the complete cloud ecosystem the data center infrastructure are also simplified. The cloud computing providers offer the services on demand which includes infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-service(PaaS), Software-as-a-service( SaaS), besides others such as security, storage, data, test environment as well as Desktop services. Moreover the cloud computing services are offered on a private, public, community or hybrid platforms. The private cloud build on latest virtualization techniques represents the virtual infrastructure operated as infrastructure-as-a-service for a single enterprise. The Public cloud is the platform wherein the applications and storage facilities are available to the public through the Internet. The Community cloud represents the virtual infrastructure shared by the organizations in a community. The hybrid cloud infrastructure is a composition cloud infrastructure and dedicated in-house physical infrastructure that remain as unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability and carries the same network topology and policies existent in the datacenter. Irrespective of the cloud platform being private, public, community or hybrid, cloud computing services can be recognized by a set of features such as 1. Availability of the services on demand and sold by the hour or the minute 2. Flexibility in the offer of services 3. Complete management of the services by the cloud computing provider makes this user friendly. The use of such a virtual IT infrastructure platform will not only ensure security of the critical business data but also enable the enterprises to reach out to new markets without infrastructure upgrading. Related Links: cloud computing providers, network penetration testing
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