Cloud Computing, a catchy metaphor for utility computing, implemented through the provisioning of various types of hosted services over the Internet, has seen phenomenal growth and quasi-universal adoption in the past two decades. The underlying business model of cloud computing is the familiar “pay-as-you-go” model of metered services, where a user pays for whatever he/she uses and no more, and where additional demand for service can be met in real time. This powerful idea was suggested, at least in part, by the pervasive low-cost high-speed Internet, a good handle on virtualization, and advances in parallel and distributed computing. Three aspects are novel in conventional cloud computing: First, it gives users the illusion of infinite computing resources available to them on demand. Second, it eliminates the up-front financial commitment by cloud users, allowing them to increase hardware/software resources as needed. Third, it gives users the ability to pay for resources on a short-term basis and release them when they are no longer needed.

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关于车用云的客座社论特刊

云计算是效用计算的一个引人入胜的比喻，通过在 Internet 上提供各种类型的托管服务来实现，在过去的 20 年中出现了惊人的增长和准普遍采用。云计算的底层商业模式是人们熟悉的计量服务“即用即付”模式，即用户按使用量付费，不再使用，实时满足额外的服务需求. 这个强大的想法至少部分是由普遍存在的低成本高速互联网、对虚拟化的良好处理以及并行和分布式计算的进步所暗示的。传统云计算在三个方面是新颖的：首先，它给用户一种他们按需可用的无限计算资源的错觉。第二，它消除了云用户的前期财务承诺，允许他们根据需要增加硬件/软件资源。第三，它使用户能够在短期内为资源付费，并在不再需要时释放它们。