Cloud is an emerging style of Information Technology infrastructure designed for rapid delivery of computing resources. Business or consumer services are delivered in a simplified manner, providing unbounded scale, differentiated quality, and with a user focus designed to foster rapid innovation and efficient decision making.

Cloud computing is a potentially cost-efficient model for provisioning processes, applications and services while making IT management easier and more responsive to the needs of the business. These services - computation services, storage services, networking services, whatever is needed - are delivered and made available in a simplified way - "on demand" regardless of where the user is or the type of device they're using.

It's this approach that enables both rapid innovation and support of core business functions. New applications are made available by highly efficient virtualised compute resources that can be rapidly scaled up and down in a flexible yet secure way to deliver a high quality of service.

IBM can help you move to a dynamic infrastructure, enabling you to deliver cloud services, whether in your own enterprise, or as one of the growing number of cloud service providers. Cloud computing helps improve service delivery by applying engineering discipline and economies of scale in an Internet inspired architecture. Standardising systems and software components can help reduce operating expenses, and virtualising the cloud environment to pool the IT resources help reduce the capital expense of hardware, software and facilities. In addition, service management capabilities are critical for dynamically provisioning, managing and securing resources within the cloud. Addressing these challenges in a cloud environment is key to reduce infrastructure costs, while still meeting the dynamic needs of the business.