ABSTRACT
Cloud data center providers can o er many advantages to their customers compared to a traditional in-house or on premises IT operation [2,3]. Most small-and midsize companies struggle with their local IT due to costs, skills, or keeping up with technological advancements. More and more start-up companies especially out of the Silicon Valley see the pure IT and data center operation as commodity that should be handled by a skilled cloud service provider. Even many fortune 500 companies which operated their own data center in that past see increased bene ts in using cloud data center providers at least as a scalable add-on for their core IT systems and business applications. We can group the major advantages of cloud data centers in seven areas:
• Cloud data centers are more secure.
