What is cloud computing?

Basically cloud is nothing but the latest evolution of computing. To be precise it is the fifth. Earlier four have been 1 Mainframe 2 Personal computers 3 client server 4 web server The general definition of cloud computing is An internet based computer environment where you select specific resources needed by you from pool of resources and pay only for these resources

Listed below are 3 very prominent exclusive features of cloud computing which make it superior : 1. Dynamism 2. Abstraction 3. Resource sharing Firstly dynamism Traditional host based computer work like this In good times our needs will be growing exponentially we hastily will buy expensive servers and install but recession strike and business goes drastically down now the newly added server will remain unused. Cloud provides solution to this, in this environment you have to just switch your existing plan in accordance to your current requirement. Secondly Abstraction Traditional host computing have been little cumbersome in their approach as they have to handle various aspects of host machine such as: operating system management, security, and software update, physically also host machines do need space and dedicated cooling systems Cloud computing makes life easy as these all complications are managed by the service provider the user have to just plug in and is ready to go. Thirdly resource sharing

Traditional hosting machines had a separate section for every department that is there are multiple copies of several resources and most of them are rarely used. Cloud computing again comes to rescue by keeping the optimal no. of resources making it available to different sections when needed.

Above pic is the provide the overview of cloud computing environment

3 Stacks
There are basically 3 stacks that work on the forefront of cloud:

SaaS (System as a Service) It directly interacts with end user. It requires only computer with browser, quite basic and making access to network very easy

Examples

 Your current CRM package is not managing the load or you simply dont want to host it in-house. Use a SaaS provider such as Salesforce.com Your email is hosted on an exchange server in your office and it is very slow. Outsource this using Hosted Exchange.

Paas (Platform as a Service): It provides cloud operating system and cloud middleware

Examples You need to host a large file (5Mb) on your website and make it available for 35,000 users for only two months duration. Use Cloud Front from Amazon. You want to start storage services on your network for a large number of files and you do not have the storage capacityuse Amazon S3.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): It serves as the base for cloud and virtualization is executed on this layer. E.g.: AmazoneEC2 (Elastic compute cloud) The whole cloud infrastructure viz. servers, routers, hardware based load-balancing, firewalls, storage & other network equipments are provided by the IaaS provider. Customers buy these resources as service on the need basis. Examples You want to run a batch job but you dont have the infrastructure necessary to run it in a timely manner. Use Amazon EC2.

You want to host a website, but only for a few days. Use Flexiscale.

Some of the barriers that exit in front of cloud computing: - Not considered safe enough due to security reasons. - Some data that is regularly used is not put on cloud eg: Billing section - Few millisecond latency do exist therefore data usage is not as fast as the real time environment.

- No standardization has occurred in this field therefore application develop for one system is not applicable in public network or on other network - Designing of business model is difficult as SaaS and PaaS are difficult to understand and work upon

How big is cloud market?

Answer is

$42B
Estimated size of cloud market in the year 2012 as estimated by International data corporation (IDC) This the fastest growing sector of IT entire IT sector grew by 7 % but cloud sector grew by 24 % As indicated in following table Year 2008 2012 Growth Year 2008 2012 Growth

Cloud IT spending

$16 B

$ 42 B

27%

Total IT spending

$367 B

$ 452 B

4%

So cloud percentage in IT grew from 4% to 9% in 4 years

Comparison of cloud computing with Grid Computing:

In broader sense we can divide development in 2 major part -Grid computing (traditional) -Cloud computing (latest development)

They both share a lot commonality intention, architecture and technology and also

Difference programming model, business model, compute model, applications, and Virtualization.

METRICS:TO EVALUATE CLOUD SERVICES

Monitoring and auditing require something tangible that can be monitored as it happens and audited after the fact. The metrics of an SLA must be objectively and unambiguously defined. Cloud consumers will have an endless variety of metrics depending on the nature of their applications and data. Although listing all metrics it is impossible, some of the most common are: Throughput How quickly the service responds Reliability How often the service is available Load balancing When elasticity kicks in (new VMs are booted or terminated, for example) Durability How likely the data is to be lost Elasticity The ability for a given resource to grow infinitely, with limits (the maximum amount of storage or bandwidth, for example) clearly stated Linearity How a system performs as the load increases Agility How quickly the provider responds as the consumer's resource load scales up and down Automation What percentage of requests to the provider are handled without any human interaction Customer service response times How quickly the provider responds to a service request. This refers to the human interactions required when something goes wrong with the on-demand, self-service aspects of the cloud.

Deployment Models
The NIST definition defines four deployment models: Public Cloud: In simple terms, public cloud services are characterized as being available to clients from a third party service provider via the Internet. The term public does not always mean free, even though it can be free or fairly inexpensive to use. A public cloud does not mean that a users data is publically visible; public cloud vendors typically provide an access control mechanism for their users. Public clouds provide an elastic, cost effective means to deploy solutions. Private Cloud: A private cloud offers many of the benefits of a public cloud computing environment, such as being elastic and service based. The difference between a private cloud and a public cloud is that in a private cloud-based service, data and processes are managed within the organization without the restrictions of network bandwidth, security exposures and legal requirements that using public cloud services might entail. In addition, private cloud services offer the provider and the user greater control of the cloud infrastructure, improving security and resiliency because user access and the networks used are restricted and designated.

 Community Cloud: A community cloud is controlled and used by a group of organizations that have shared interests, such as specific security requirements or a common mission. The members of the community share access to the data and applications in the cloud. Hybrid Cloud: A hybrid cloud is a combination of a public and private cloud that interoperates. In this model users typically outsource nonbusinesscritical information and processing to the public cloud, while keeping business-critical services and data in their control

Essential Characteristics
The NIST definition describes five essential characteristics of cloud computing. Rapid Elasticity: Elasticity is defined as the ability to scale resources both up and down as needed. To the consumer, the cloud appears to be infinite, and the consumer can purchase as much or as little computing power as

they need. This is one of the essential characteristics of cloud computing in the NIST definition. Measured Service: In a measured service, aspects of the cloud service are controlled and monitored by the cloud provider. This is crucial for billing, access control, resource optimization, capacity planning and other tasks. On-Demand Self-Service: The on-demand and selfservice aspects of cloud computing mean that a consumer can use cloud services as needed without any human interaction with the cloud provider. Ubiquitous Network Access: Ubiquitous network access means that the cloud providers capabilities are available over the network and can be accessed through standard mechanisms by both thick and thin clients. Resource Pooling: Resource pooling allows a cloud provider to serve its consumers via a multi-tenant model. Physical and virtual resources are assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, ordatacenter).

Other Terms Interoperability: Interoperability is concerned with the ability of systems to communicate. It requires that the communicated information is understood by the receiving system. In the world of cloud computing, this means the ability to write code that works with more than one cloud provider simultaneously, regardless of the differences between the providers. Portability: Portability is the ability to run components or systems written for oneenvironment in another environment. In the world of cloud computing, thisincludes software and hardware environments (both physical and virtual). Integration: Integration is the process of combining components or systems intoan overall system. Integration among cloud-based components and systems canbe complicated by issues such as multi-tenancy, federation and governmentregulations. Service Level Agreement (SLA): An SLA is contract between a provider and aconsumer that specifies consumer requirements and the providers commitment to them. Typically an SLA includes items such as uptime, privacy, security andbackup procedures. Federation: Federation is the act of combining data or identities across multiplesystems. Federation can be done by a cloud provider or by a cloud broker. Broker: A broker has no cloud resources of its own, but matches consumers andproviders based on the SLA required by the consumer. The consumer has noknowledge that the broker does not control the resources.

 Multi-Tenancy: Multi-tenancy is the property of multiple systems, applications ordata from different enterprises hosted on the same physical hardware. Multitenancyis common to most cloud-based systems. Cloud bursting: Cloud bursting is a technique used by hybrid clouds to provideadditional resources to private clouds on an as-needed basis. If the private cloudhas the processing power to handle its workloads, the hybrid cloud is not used.When workloads exceed the private clouds capacity, the hybrid cloudautomatically allocates additional resources to the private cloud. Policy: A policy is a general term for an operating procedure. For example, asecurity policy might specify that all requests to a particular cloud service mustbe encrypted. Governance: Governance refers to the controls and processes that make surepolicies are enforced. Virtual Machine (VM): A file (typically called an image) that, when executed,looks to the user like an actual machine. Infrastructure as a Service is oftenprovided as a VM image that can be started or stopped as needed. Changesmade to the VM while it is running can be stored to disk to make them persistent. Application Programming Interface (API): An application programming interface is a contract that tells a developer how to write code to interact with some kind of system. The API describes the syntax of the operations supported by the system. For each operation, the API specifies the information that should be sent to the system, the information that the system will send back, and anyerror conditions that might occur. An API requires human intelligence to understand the semantics of the dataand operations. A machine can discover that method x requires twointegers as its parameters, but a developer, a human being, has to

figureout which of infinity's two integers should be used.

Risks
Cloud computing's users are exposed to risks mainly associated with: 1) Information security and users' privacy Using a service of cloud computing to store data may expose the user to potential violation of privacy. Possession of a user's personal information is entrusted to a provider that can reside in a country other than the user's. In the case of a malicious behavior of the cloud provider, it could access the data in order to perform market research and user profiling. In the case of wireless cloud computing, the safety risk increases as a function of reduced security offered by wireless networks. In the presence of illegal acts like misappropriation or illegal appropriation of personal data, the damage could be very serious for the user, with difficulty to reach legal solutions and/or refunds if the provider resides in a state other than the user's country. In the case of industries or corporations, all the data stored in external memories are seriously exposed to possible cases of international or cyber espionage 2) International, political and economic problems

May arise when public data are freely collected and privately stored from cloud's archives located in a country other than those of the cloud's users. Crucial and intellectual productions and large amounts of personal informations are increasingly stored in private, centralized and partially accessible archives

in the form of digital data. No guarantee is given to the users for a free future access. Issues are related with the location of the cloud's archives in a few rich countries. If not governed by specific international rules: 1. it could increase the digital divide between rich and poor nations (if the access to the stored knowledge will be not freely ensured to all). 2. being the intangible property considered as a strategic factor for the modern knowledge-based economies it could favor big corporations with "polycentric bodies" and "monocentric minds" only located in the "cloud's countries".

3) Continuity of service Delegating their data-managing and processing to an external service, users are severely limited when these services are not operating. A malfunction also affects a large number of users at once because these services are often shared on a large network. As the service provided is supported by a high-speed Internet connection (both in download and upload), even in the event of an interruption of the line connection due to the user's Internet Service Provider (ISP) he or she will face a complete paralysis of the work. 4) Data migration problems when changing the cloud provider

Another issue is related with the data migration or porting when a user wants to change his cloud provider. There is no defined standard between the operators and such a change is

extremely complex. The case of bankruptcy of the company of the cloud provider could be extremely dangerous for the user

Advantages of cloud computing are:

-economic for both user and vendor -users dont have to invest high capital upfront to enter its data center running. -user realized it simple to use as applications are developed according to the concept of abstraction. -authentic user can access its data from any location thus not only free a big area but increasing the mobility -maximum utilization of available resources and concept of virtualization has exemplified this concept many fold. -support environmental cause by supporting the concept of GREEN IT as instead of decentralized servers a single server farm is developed.

Conclusion:
Cloud computing is still at an infant stage. It hope to provide great flexibility to service users

Dynamic allocation is set to provide great guns to the market as it set to free them from various worries This technology is set grow at a very rapid rate