Broad network access:
Cloud Capabilities are available over the network and
accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use
by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms such as
mobile phones, laptops and PDAs.
Resource pooling:
The provider’s computing resources are pooled together to
serve multiple consumers using multiple-tenant model,
with different physical and virtual resources dynamically
assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.
The resources include among others storage, processing,
memory, network bandwidth, virtual machines and email
services.
Rapid elasticity:
Cloud services can be rapidly and elastically provisioned,
in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and
rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the
capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be
unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any
time.
Measured service:
Cloud computing resource usage can be measured,
controlled, and reported providing transparency for both
the provider and consumer of the utilized service.