CLOUD COMPUTING

Abstract:
Cloud computing is clearly one of todays most enticing technology areas due, at least in part, to its cost-efficiency and flexibility. However, despite the surge in activity and interest, there are significant, persistent concerns about cloud computing that are impeding momentum and will eventually compromise the vision of cloud computing as a new IT procurement model. Keywords: Cloud, Computing, Agility, Flexibility, Device Diversity. Infrastructure-as-a-Service, like Amazon Web Services, provides virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider's application program interface to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage. Platform-as-a-Service, in the cloud is defined as a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider's infrastructure. Developers create applications on the provider's platform over the Internet. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer's computer. Force.com, (an outgrowth of Salesforce.com) and Google Applications are examples of PaaS. Developers need to know that currently, there are not standards for interoperability or data portability in the cloud. Software-as-a-Service cloud model, the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal. SaaS is a
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Introduction:
It can be the ability to rent a server or a thousand servers and run a geophysical modeling application on the most powerful systems available anywhere. It can be the ability to rent a virtual server, load software on it, turn it on and off at will, or clone it ten times to meet a sudden workload demand. cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)." The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams.

very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.

goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.

Life before cloud computing:

Traditional business applications have always been very complicated and expensive. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them are daunting. You need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them. When you multiply this effort across dozens or hundreds of applications, its easy to see why the biggest companies with the best IT departments arent getting the applications they need. Small and mid-sized businesses dont stand a chance.

A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting.

It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; A user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time.

Cloud computing: a better way

With cloud computing, you eliminate those headaches because youre not managing hardware and software-thats the responsibility of an experienced vendor like salesforce.com. The shared infrastructure means it works like a utility: You only pay for what you need, upgrades are automatic, and scaling up or down is easy. Cloud-based apps can be up and running in days or weeks, and they cost less. With a cloud application, you just open a browser, log in, customize the application, and start using it. Businesses are running all kinds of apps in the cloud, like customer relationship management (CRM), HR, accounting, and much more. Some of the worlds largest companies moved their applications to the cloud with salesforce.com after rigorously

The service is fully managed by the provider. Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing. A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the

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testing the security and reliability of our infrastructure. As cloud computing grows in popularity, thousands of companies are simply rebranding their non-cloud products and services as cloud computing. Always dig deeper when evaluating cloud offerings and keep in mind that if you have to buy and manage hardware and software, what youre looking at isnt really cloud computing but a false cloud.

Data Cloud
Along with services the cloud will host data. There has been some discussion of this being a potentially useful notion possibly aligned with the Semantic Web, though it could result in data becoming undifferentiated.

Cloud computing Architecture:

Cloud computing architecture, just like any other system, is categorized into two main sections: Front End and Back End. Front End can be end user or client or any application (i.e. web browser etc.) which is using cloud services. Back End is the network of servers with any computer program and data storage system. It is usually assumed that cloud contains infinite storage capacity for any software available in market. Cloud has different applications that are hosted on their own dedicated server farms.

Cloud Storage:
Over time many big Internet based companies (Amazon, Google) have come to realize that only a small amount of their data storage capacity is being used. This has led to the renting out of space and the storage of information on remote servers or "clouds". Information is then temporarily cached on desktop computers, mobile phones or other internet-linked devices. Amazons Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud(EC2) and Simple Storage Solution (S3) are the current best known facilities.

Cloud has centralized server administration system. Centralized server administers the system, balances client supply, adjusts demands, monitors traffic and avoids congestion. This server follows protocols, commonly known as middleware. Middleware controls the communication of cloud network among them.
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Cloud Architecture runs on a very important assumption, which is mostly true. The assumption is that the demand for resources is not always consistent from client to cloud. Because of this reason the servers of cloud are unable to run at their full capacity. To avoid this scenario, server virtualization technique is applied. In sever virtualization, all physical servers are virtualized and they run multiple servers with either same or different application. As one physical server acts as multiple physical servers, it curtails the need for more physical machines. As a matter of fact, data is the most important part of cloud computing; thus, data security is the top most priority in all the data operations of cloud. Here, all the data are backed up at multiple locations. This astoundingly increases the data storage to multiple times in cloud compared with a regular system. Redundancy of data is crucial, which is a must-have attribute of cloud computing.

Availability of servers is high and more reliable as the chances of infrastructure failure are minimal. Multi-sharing With the cloud working in a distributed and shared mode, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reductions by sharing common infrastructure. Services in pay-per-use mode SLAs between the provider and the user must be defined when offering services in pay per use mode. This may be based on the complexity of services offered. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) may be offered to the users so they can access services on the cloud by using these APIs. Support for all service oriented applications. Cloud computing has the potential to help agencies leverage modern technologies such as computer virtualization and worldwide Internet connectivity. Some of the key business drivers are: a. Pursuing new business opportunities, such as trialing new ideas to reach and interact with customers over the Internet; b. Reducing upfront costs of capital expenditure of computer equipment and related expenses such as a physical data centre and support staff, while reducing the associated financial risk to the agency by replacing upfront costs with reasonably predictable operational expenditure, and only paying for the amount of computing processing and data storage that is actually used; c. Potentially reducing ongoing costs due to the use of infrastructure and technical
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Characteristics of cloud computing:

Cloud computing, typically entails: High scalability Cloud environments enable servicing of business requirements for larger audiences, through high scalability. Agility The cloud works in the distributed mode environment. It shares resources among users and tasks, while improving efficiency and agility (responsiveness). High availability and reliability

specialists that are typically shared among many customers to achieve economies of scale, however the cost of applying controls to help address security risks especially associated with shared infrastructure may reduce the potential cost savings of some types of cloud computing. d. Potentially improving business continuity and the availability of computing Infrastructure if users have guaranteed available network connectivity, where the infrastructure can rapidly and flexibly scale to meet peaks and troughs in usage demand, and with the computing infrastructure typically located in multiple physical locations for improved disaster recovery. e. Potentially reducing carbon footprint due to the more efficient use of computer hardware requiring less electricity and less air conditioning.

Public clouds This environment can be used by the general public. This includes individuals, corporations and other types of organizations. Typically, public clouds are administrated by third parties or vendors over the Internet, and services are offered on pay-per-use basis. These are also called provider clouds. Business models like SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and public clouds complement each other and enable companies to leverage shared IT resources and services. Example New York Times archive project which used 100 Amazon EC2 instances and 5.5TB of S3 storage to generate PDFs of 11 million articles for the papers archives, at a small fraction of traditional costs. Advantages Public clouds are widely used in the development, deployment and management of enterprise applications, at affordable costs. Allows organizations to deliver highly scalable and reliable applications rapidly and at more affordable costs. Limitations Security is a significant concern in public clouds.
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Comparison technologies:

with

related

Several technologies are related to cloud computing, and the cloud has emerged as a convergence of several computing trends. It seeks to address certain key aspects that may have been lacking in each of these trends, individually. The features of each of these related technologies and how they compare with cloud computing has been outlined in the table.

Types of cloud computing :

The cloud computing environment can consist of multiple types of clouds based on their deployment and usage.

Private clouds This cloud computing environment resides within the boundaries of an organization and is used exclusively for the organizations benefits.These are also called internal clouds. They are built primarily by IT departments within enterprises who seek to optimize utilization of infrastructure resources within the enterprise by provisioning the infrastructure with applications using the concepts of grid and virtualization. Advantages They improve average server utilization, allow usage of low-cost servers and hardware while providing higher efficiencies; thus reducing the costs that a greater number of servers would otherwise entail. High levels of automation, reducing operations costs and administrative overheads. Limitations IT teams in the organization may have to invest in buying, building and managing the clouds independently. External clouds This cloud computing environment is outside of the boundaries of the organization, though it is not necessarily a public cloud. Some external clouds make their cloud infrastructure available to specific other organizations, but not to the general public. Community cloud

This cloud involves a private cloud that is shared by several organisations with similar security requirements and a need to store or process data of similar sensitivity. This model attempts to obtain most of the security benefits of a private cloud, and most of the economic benefits of a public cloud. An example community cloud is the sharing of a private cloud by several agencies of the same government. Hybrid clouds This is a combination of both private (internal) and public (external) cloud computing environments.

Variations of clouds:
Clouds can be classified as: Infrastructures Platforms Applications

Infrastructures:
Salient features Known also as IaaS (Infrastructure-asaService), acknowledged as the most potent cloud. Provides access to shared resources on need basis, without revealing details like location and hardware to clients. Provides details like server images on demand, storage, queuing, and information about other resources, among others. Vendors who provide this type of service enable cloud platforms and cloud applications. Some may even leverage others within the space to provide competitive viability as well.
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 Offers full control of server infrastructure, not limited specifically to applications, instances and containers. Example Amazons EC2, through which users can request Linux Virtual Machine instances that are created on the fly and billed based on actual usage. Limitations Service providers may demand higher prices for services offered. Issues pertaining to resource and server down time.

Applications:
Salient features Companies host applications on the Internet and users sign up and use them, without concerning themselves about its maintenance and where abouts. This is also called as SaaS (Software-as-a- Service). Advantages Mostly free, very easy to use, feature rich, easy to access and promises good consumer adoption. Limitations User can only use the application and would not know the technology leveraged to develop the application; thereby user has little control over application development.

Platforms:
Salient features Known also as PaaS (Platform-as-aService) Empowers developers to deploy, deliver and manage their applications. They can build applications, upload(deploy) the same into the cloud platform and simply run and test them. Developers can also leverage additional benefits like authentication and data access provided by the platform. This cloud takes away the concept of servers, while providing an application centric environment. While creating this kind of cloud computing platform, a vendor builds a cloud platform first and then develops applications that run on it (OR) develops a hostable application and then plugs it into the cloud. But considering the advantages and disadvantages, the latter would be the better approach. Limitations Significant dependency on cloud infrastructure providers.

Cloud computing advantages:

There are various tools and features that users will be able to track when using the cloud computing resource. These features/tools would include:

Testing Building applications Developmental Stages Network equipment Hosting Maintenance

There are 10 basic cloud computing advantages that will better help you to understand the reasons as to why people use this method for their hardware.

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Cost Effective There is no need for users to invest their time and money into using stand alone servers which would be a bit complicating to use compared to the cloud method. It is a cheaper way to maintain the software and it will save time, as the developers keep track of updates and maintain your programs while you use it. There is no need for replacing capital expenditures on a regular basis. The cost of using cloud resources is very economical for resources such as centralized, real estate, bandwidth, and power. Users will also save money on software updates, management costs, and data storage costs. Speed & Scales There is no need to purchase and setup hardware manually when using the cloud computing method. Depending upon their needs the user can quickly scale up or scale down. Innovation Users can now pay closer attention to the innovation process because they dont have to manually manage other resources. Cloud computing produces a faster development pace for prototype and testing phases. Projects at which users have to watch over for progress on a regular basis will benefit the most because of this advantage. Convenient Since overheads are low when sharing the same infrastructure the services are available to use immediately. Payments are only billed for the times that the service is being utilized. You can easily check the cost of the bill because the service provider will make them available online for you to view.

Location Areas that have lower overheads are able to utilize this service and take advantage of the benefits as well. Many different websites are able to be set up in the case of a disaster recovery which helps the companies to cut costs in different ways. Multiple Users at one time Cloud computing is not only cost effective, but utilizing it also helps to cut back on global wastes. It is environmentally friendly since it is shared by multiple users. The down time is cut in half and the resources are stretched. Flexible There is a high rate of flexibility when using cloud computing because people can opt out of using it whenever they want too. This is also one of the main reasons people love to use this method. Service level agreements are what cover the costs in this case. If the correct quality is not provided then has to pay a penalty cost. Device Diversity The cloud computing method can be accessed through various different electronic devices that are able to have access to the internet. These devices would include and iPod, Smartphone, Laptop, or desktop computer. Lots of Storage Space When you use the internet with the cloud services then your company will have lots more room to store the files and data that they need to store. Customize Settings Last but not least, you will enjoy the fact that cloud computing allows you to
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customize your business applications. This is a great benefit because the world of online business is very competitive.

Quality problems with CSP (Cloud

Service Providers).No influence on maintenance levels and fix frequency when using cloud services from a CSP.

Cloud computing disadvantages:

The main disadvantages are Security and Privacy, Dependency (loss of control), Cost, Decreased flexibility, Knowledge And Integration. Security&Privacy: The biggest concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. Users might not be comfortable handing over their data to a third party. This is an even greater concern when it comes to companies that wish to keep their sensitive information on cloud servers. While most service vendors would ensure that their servers are kept free from viral infection and malware, it Is still a concern considering the fact that a number of users from around the world are accessing the server. Privacy is another issue with cloud servers. Ensuring that a clients data is not accessed by any unauthorized users is of great importance for any cloud service. To make their servers more secure, cloud service vendors have developed password protected accounts, security servers through which all data being transferred must pass and data encryption techniques. After all, the success of a cloud service depends on its reputation, and any sign of a security breach would result in a loss of clients and business. Dependency:

No

or little insight in CSP contingency procedures especially backup, restore and disaster recovery.

No easy migration to another CSP. Measurement of resource usage

and end user activities lies in the hands of the CSP

Tied
Cost:

to the financial health of another Company.

Higher costs. While in the long run, cloud hosting is a lot cheaper than traditional technologies, the fact that its currently new and has to be researched and improved actually makes it more expensive. Data centers have to buy or develop the software thatll run the cloud, rewire the machines and fix unforeseen problems. This makes their initial cloud offers more expensive. Like in all other industries, the first customers pay a higher price and have to deal with more issues than those who switch later. Decreased flexibility: This is only a temporary problem, but current technologies are still in the testing stages, so they dont really
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offer the flexibility they promise. Of course, thatll change in the future, but some of the current users might have to deal with the facts that their cloud server is difficult or impossible to upgrade without losing some data, for example. Knowledge and Integration: Knowledge: More and deeper knowledge is required for implementing and managing SLA contracts with CSPs ,Since all knowledge about the working of the cloud (e.g. hardware, software, virtualization, deployment) is concentrated at the CSP, it is hard to get grip on the CSP. Integration: Integration with equipment hosted in other data centers is difficult to achieve. Peripherals integration. (Bulk)Printers and local security IT equipment (e.g. access systems) is difficult to integrate. But also (personal) USB devices or smart phones or groupware and email systems are difficult to integrate. CONCLUSION: Cloud computing is the most popular notion in IT today; even an academic report from UC Berkeley says Cloud Computing is likely to have the same impact on software that foundries have had on the hardware industry. They go on to recommend that developers would be wise to design their next generation of systems to be deployed into Cloud Computing. While many of

the predictions may be cloud hype, we believe the new IT procurement model offered by cloud computing is here to stay. Whether adoption becomes as prevalent and deep as some forecast will depend largely on overcoming fears of the cloud. After so many years, Cloud Computing today is the beginning of network based computing over Internet in force. It is the technology of the decade and is the enabling element of two totally new computing models, the Client-Cloud computing and the Terminal-Cloud computing. These new models would create whole generations of applications and business. Our prediction is that it is the beginning to the end of the dominance of desktop computing such as that with the Windows. It is also the beginning of a new Internet based service economy: the Internet centric, Web based, on demand, Cloud applications and computing economy.

REFERENCES:
1. www.wikipedia.com 2. http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloudcomputing/what-cloud-computingreally-means-031 3. http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcom puting/ 4. http://www.itdirector.com/business/innovation/co ntent.php?cid=11990.

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