Whats the difference between on-premise, hosted, and on-demand computing?
On-premise typically refers to hardware and software that is owned or leased by the end user and deployed at their site. Hosted refers to facilities that house hardware and lease systems to end-users. Users can either manage the systems or pay the hosting company to manage them. In a hosted environment, you pay for capacity whether you use it or not. On-demand, or utility computing is a pay-as-you-use model, where you only pay for the computing resources you actually use. Some on-demand solutions offer only capacity, some offer capacity, OS, and tools (such as Solaris on Amazon EC2), and some offer a complete package of capacity, OS, and specific applications.
