Cloud Computing



Cloud Computing

Introduction

Technology has transformed the world we live in. In today's world, technology constitutes integral part in every aspect of our lives. Beginning from healthcare to business, none can deny the immense benefits of advancing technology. Internet has facilitated the way we learn, communicate, or even do business. The world is facilitated with new means of managing information efficiently. Licklider was the first person who provided the vision that would completely transform the world. He wanted everyone around the globe to be connected in a way that they could access programs and data from any site. Later, the idea evolved, and became what we call cloud computing.

The research paper aims to explore Cloud Computing and its recent development, Web 2.0. It is essential to examine its vast usage in organizations. The research evaluates benefits & limitations of the technologies.

Cloud Computing

IT professionals describe cloud computing from varying perspectives. Therefore, Cloud Computing has no fixed definition. The concept of cloud computing is based on applications & services provided on the Internet. These applications and services are delivered by the data centers spread around the globe. Anyone who is connected to Internet has access to these services. “Cloud” is used as a metaphor for illustrating the universal nature of “Internet”. It symbolizes the presence of network connections, computers, applications, and online services. These online services are inter connected, allowing users to share data with other users and computer systems. A nice internet connection is all that is needed (Knorr & Gruman, 2010).

From the perspective of a computer scientist, cloud computing defines “Computation being delivered as a public utility”. In a more generalized way, cloud computing refers to providing hosted services over the web. Cloud computing services have been classified into three broad domains:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platform as a Service (Paas)

One should discriminate a cloud service from other forms of hosted services. Cloud services are available on demand. Usually, these services are sold by minutes or hours. Elasticity is another discriminating feature. A cloud service offers flexibility to a user. Users can utilize as much services as they require. Further, the cloud services are managed by the service providers. A user needs nothing but computer with an internet connection. A cloud service can either be public or private. It depends upon the scope of service. A public cloud service is available for anyone on the internet, while a private service cloud facilitates fixed number of users. Amazon Web Services is a public cloud provider (Oltsick, 2010). Cloud computing offers many services like online data storage, email communication, social networking, and a lot more. The most attractive feature, that makes cloud computing so widely accepted, is that it allows charge-per-use to online services, computing infrastructure etc. It offers optimized computing with efficient collaboration, accessibility, and scalability.

Figure 1: Cloud Computing Illustration

Types of Cloud Services

Examples

Software as a Service

Web-bases emails like Yahoo, Msn, Gmail; CRM.

Platform as a Service

Google Apps, Google Wave, Forrester wave, App Engine

Infrastructure as a Service

Amazon Web Services, HP ...