7 Things You Should Know About: Cloud Computing

When a medical researcher at the university's teaching hospital won a federal grant to study new treatments for Alzheimer's patients, he requested a sophisticated computer system - unlike anything the IT department had previously implemented or supported - including both storage and application components. Although part of the grant could fund this system, Rachel, the institution's CIO, soon saw that obtaining these services from the cloud was a better option than developing them in-house. At the same time, though, the project raised several security questions that would need to be addressed. The research involved not only human subjects but also graduate students, and the institution had to ensure the privacy of those individuals.