ABSTRACT
Cloud computing is a disruptive technology that can unlock business value for organizations that effectively exploit it. Cloud service providers (CSPs) offer shared, elastic resources on demand in a pay-as-you-go business model to cloud service customer (CSC) organizations. This chapter reviews the standard cloud infrastructure service provider business models, and considers the cloud service customer business model. It reviews the standard IT service management objectives. The chapter focuses on how the nine "benefits of network functions virtualisation" expected by the world's largest telecommunications service providers for their massive planned investment in cloud/network functions virtualization (NFV) in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV white paper apply to both CSCs and cloud infrastructure service providers. The nine benefits are: reduced equipment costs, increased velocity of time to market, reduced development costs and intervals, targeted service introduction, open and diverse ecosystem, optimized capacity and workload placement, multitenancy support, reduced power consumption and improved operational efficiency.
