The opening case in Chapter $5,$American Airlines Heads for Clouds, discusses the company$$s use of cloud computing to compete in the airline industry while meeting its business strategy of providing good customer experiences with low prices. After reviewing the opening case and the information in Chapter $5,$ discuss the characteristics of cloud computing. In what ways can cloud computing benefit a company? How is cloud computing changing the way companies do business? Discuss the positive and negative impacts of cloud computing for consumers and businesses. Do you think the positive outweighs the negative? Why or why not?

Discuss the various database technologies to include the traditional file environment, relational database management systems, non$-$relational database management systems, and cloud databases. Evaluate the database technologies to determine the advantages and disadvantages as well as the best uses for these database technologies. Which of the database technologies do you think would be most advantageous in terms of benefits, costs, and implementation? Why?