Cloud computing services are changing how businesses and public institutions use information technology. Today cloud services are available to meet most any IT need. Although there’s great variety among cloud computing services, all such services have certain basic features and benefits in common, and all can be categorized into a few basic cloud service types.

From the perspective of service users, cloud computing services have these main features:

• Hosted and maintained by the provider
• Self-service through a web interface
• Pay for use
• Near-limitless scalability
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)