Typically a cloud consists of a dynamically assigned group of computers that

is elasticity. Typically, a cloud consists of a dynamically assigned group of computers that can scale up quickly at your request. Further, these computers are virtual machines that are unconstrained in their capabilities. This extreme flexibility offers transformative, new usage modalities for computing for research

Cloud Computing "-as-a-Service" The term Cloud computing may be applied to products categorized broadly into three categories.  Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Applications served over the Internet, like Google Docs.  Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Specialized APIs for building applications on the Internet Like Google App Engine or Force.com .  Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Low-level services for basic storage and computing. A variety of services are now available: Amazon Web Services , Windows Azure , and now Google Compute Engine . Cloud Applications and services Google Apps Marketplace: Google Apps Marketplace is a product of Google Inc. It is an online store designed to help people and organizations to discover, purchase, and deploy integrated cloud web applications that work with Google Apps ( Gmail , Google Drive , Google Sites , Google Calendar , Google Contacts , etc.) and with third party software . Some apps are free, some are paid for. Apps are based on Google APIs or on Google Apps Script . Google Apps business

administrators can manage a single directory of both users and applications from the same unified interface as Google Apps, reducing overhead and improving security. Online office suite: An online office suite or online productivity suite is a type of office suite offered by websites in the form of software as a service . They can be accessed online from any Internet - enabled device running any operating system. This allows people to work together worldwide and at any time, thereby leading to international web-based collaboration and virtual teamwork .