As companies continue to grow their footprints and customer reach by expanding their networks into the cloud, it has become imperative for companies to show the ability to provide consistent and reliable connectivity across the WAN and/or internet to drive customer growth. As we have witnessed in recent years, many companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com have grown exponentially with their ability to drive consistent and reliable access for customers to grow the bottom line.

For this discussion, pick one of the following topics associated with the cloud and research it accordingly. Your main post should describe how you would evaluate the cloud service as a business tool and customer benefit.

Focus on the following capabilities needed for a company that is just deciding to get into the cloud services world.

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)