The term cloud computing refers to an Internet-based technology through which information is stored in servers and provided as a service (Software as a Service,or SaaS) and on-demand to clients (from the clouds indeed). Its impact will be spec- tacular on both consumers and firms. On one side, consumers will be able to ac- cess all of their documents and data from any device (the personal laptop, the mo- bile phone, an Internet Point), as they already do for email services, and to exploit impressive computational capabilities. 5 On the other side, firms will be able to rent computing power (both hardware and software) and storage from a service provider.
