Nowadays, cloud computing has become both a business model and a methodology for managing the underlying IT infrastructure. In a cloud-based environment, however, there should ideally be an automated business workflow that allows users to quickly and automatically request new services from the service catalogue.
Central aspects here include virtualization, automation, and capacity planning. Ideally, these should be controlled through a self-service portal, so that both end-users and the IT manager can intervene in the infrastructure, at any moment of the day or night. Think here of tasks such as the creation of a new server, the activation of extra resources or the rollout of a software upgrade. Tasks that used to take days or even weeks can now be done in a fully automated cloud environment in less than one hour.
Source: Seeding the Clouds: Key Infrastructure Elements for Cloud Computing IBM 2009
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