Remotely hosted services and cloud computing. D. Cliff. BECTA report. 2009. pp1-16.

This report was written for an educational organisation called BECTA so it has an educational  rather than a business perspective. However, pages 1-16 are a good, easy to read, introduction to cloud computing.

Let it rise. A special report on corporate IT. The Economist, October 25th 2008. pp1-8

This is a report on cloud computing written from a business perspective. For this course, the most relevant sections are in pages 1-8, which discuss cloud computing technologies.

(The links above take you to a cloud service (Google docs) to view these documents. If you want to download them as PDF, you can click on the attachments below)

This introductory article takes a slightly different approach and discusses the evolution of cloud technology.

The wikipedia article on cloud computing is OK but is not, in my opinion, very understandable by people who don't already know what cloud computing is.

The Big Switch. Nicholas Carr.

This is an easy-to-read book that introduces cloud computing and the idea of computing as a utility like power or water. It is not deeply technical.

There are lots of books on Amazon on cloud computing topics.  If you wish to explore the area in more depth, you may wish to take a look at some of these. I haven't read them.

These are links to videos on cloud computing that you may find helpful.

Steve Jobs from Apple introduces icloud (from 79 -83 minutes)

There are lots of other videos on YouTube on this topic. I haven't had time to look at them all but you may wish to browse and take a look at any that seem to be relevant.