Overview of Cloud Computing

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:Computer Science

Document 1

However, despite the many benefits that have arisen from the use of cloud computing, there have been its demerits. Some issues have also developed and deserve consideration. For instance, there have been privacy and security issues, which have turned out to be the top challenges facing the broader use of cloud technologies. The focus of this work is to provide a more comprehensive overview of cloud computing including its recent developments which cover the various aspects of cloud computing such as the security of cloud services. A closer look in the recent developments in cloud services is also made by a study on the trends in cloud computing. Whenever someone sits at their computers to search for something in Google, it should be known that your computer plays a small role in finding what you are searching for.

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Your computer can be compared to a messenger. Your query (what you searched for) is quickly moved across the Internet to one of Google's several computers. These computers then examine your question, and when it obtains results, it sends them quickly to you. Either way, if it does not get any results, it will promptly relay back the message to your computer. People don’t require specialized software to send emails anymore. They can send and receive emails wherever they are. We can take a newer instance of cloud computing, preparing documents over the Internet. This is possible by logging in to a web-based service for example nowadays we have Google Documents. There, you can come up with a spreadsheet, document, presentation, or anything that can be made from the software in your computer at home.

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What makes cloud computing different. Cloud computing is managed. From our examples above we have seen that the services you enjoy are provided by someone else, in our case a company like Google, and operated on your stead. If one is software for example like Google documents, they barely have to worry on renewing several licenses for this software, activating them or making sure they are up-to-date. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about viruses that might find a way into your computer or losing files that you have created. Cloud services are also offered on a subscription basis. In essence, one buys cloud computing services the same way they would have bought electricity or Internet access from a utility company. In other instances, cloud computing services are free of any charges or are paid for in different ways.

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Hotmail is subsidized through advertising. You can buy any amount of cloud computing service that you require from one day to the next. The web-based emails together with the free services offered by Google are examples of the public cloud as shown in Figure 1 below. Amazon turned out to be the largest provider of public cloud computing in the world way back in 2006. It is the largest online retailer currently. When it came to knowing that a small portion of its computing power was being used, it decided to rent out the unused capacity through the Internet. This was made possible by a system called Amazon Web Services (AWS). For cloud computing, there hasn’t been an exact date which mentions its evolution. Nonetheless, John McCarthy and Douglas Parkhill, in the 1960s, explored the idea of computing being carried out as a public utility [3].

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This idea came as a result of the use of mainframe computers. During that time, clients were accessing the main computing power through terminals. This came with high cost and maintenance. The Idea phase- it began in the early 1960s upon the emergence of grid computing and utility. It stayed still the pre-Internet bubble era. ii. The Pre- cloud phase- it originated way back in 1999 and lasted to around 2006. This is the era in which the Internet was used as a mechanism to provide the application as services. Unlike the two other models, IaaS doesn’t have applications or any operating system. This means that the user will have to implement them before using this model. It only makes it possible to access the infrastructure needed for that software to work.

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IaaS can provide additional storage for backing up data, network bandwidth for a server of a company’s website, or accessing high power computing which used to be only accessible when supercomputers. IaaS users like Amazon EC2 and Google’s Compute Engine are slowly becoming the major part of the Internet. C. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) It is also called ‘on-demand software. ’ This model has licensed software. The user has just to use the software presented to them Here, completely functional and full software product is given to a user via the Internet based on a subscription method SaaS features are accessible to users with the help of a web browser. This somewhat makes the user’s software quite irrelevant. Microsoft Cloud Services This is a group of services from Microsoft. For example, Google OneDrive, Office 365 and Azure.

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OneDrive has turned out to be the most accepted storage tool of cloud service. Azure is good but has not gained so much public liking. Because of this, Google is working on it to make it more popular through a future addition of datacenters to ensure faster operation. This makes it easier for web-scale computing for developers. iv. Citrix Cloud Platform This a big cloud service. Citrix is currently planning to increase its operations. It describes itself as the only future-proofed industry tool, and in the development of apps. It looks like the company has joined other organizations to assist them with private clouds and hybrid clouds. vi. BlueLock Cloud Services This company is a tool for data recovery of data. It adapted a new slogan by the definition Recovery as a Service.

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It’s evident that data if it is determined that it is unusable, it can recover them using the services of BlueLock. It has over 50 datacenters across the world. This indicates a promising future for Verizon-Terremark. In essence, they are IaaS and there are developments to provide certain products from Oracle as a service of cloud to their users. In this manner, users will have the capacity to use the most recent version of the product. There will be regular updates from Verizon. Open source cloud is destined to grow both horizontally and vertically. x. Google Cloud Platform There are a few forms of this. Nonetheless, Google Cloud Platform has been mentioned when talking about popular of cloud service providers today. The common ones include Google App Engine and Google Compute.

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For example, Azure requires a few changes. It also still needs proper marketing so that people are educated about cloud services. VI. cloud computing characteristics Cloud computing characteristics can be outlined in five characteristics: A. Wide access to the network There is a resourceful environment provided for users in a network. A user of cloud computing can use to enjoy services, such as network storage, word processing solely. These services from cloud computing operate on a self- service mechanism. Therefore, the user will not require any form of human interaction. This characteristic makes cloud computing quite fast and very reliable. D. They can tell location at a general abstraction level — for example, state, province or city. Such resources which can be pooled include memory and network bandwidth. VII. cloud computing according to NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) outlines five major cloud computing actors: the consumer, auditor, carrier, provider, and broker.

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All of them interact, depending on their role on the cloud. You can access some controls, for example, control over software development. iii. IaaS specialist. As an infrastructure specialist, you access more controls than the other type of users. i. It should be in the capacity to meet any requirement of SaaS. PaaS developers have control over a company’ data. They decide on how the data should be moved into to the cloud. They decide which security tools should be best applied to ensure maximum safety of both the user’s data and their company’s data. However, the company providing cloud services will not allow PaaS developers to control the virtual machines, storage, operating systems, and network systems. Are fully functional. The provider keeps SaaS software up-to-date. ii.  PaaS provider has the responsibility for providing resources.

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The provider gives PaaS developers the tools they will use for software development. ii. Combining services. Cloud brokers bring together different services from several SaaS providers to integrating them into one or more service. iii. Platform to select services from various SaaS or PaaS service providers. Cloud carrier The cloud carrier, as the name suggests carries cloud services between cloud consumers and cloud providers. A service provider holds full responsibility for coming up with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the carrier [7]. The SLA provides some guarantees that the cloud carried should meet. If the carrier fails to meet these guarantees, the cloud carrier will face some penalties. VIII. When you don’t require it, you do not need to pay for it. There is no invested IT capital that will make you worried.

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Companies doing businesses like bakery will sometimes require computing services. Does this mean that they should own computers? No. The use of cloud computing is of much importance to such companies. The users just enjoy a web-based platform for accessing the services without having to install or maintain. The SLA then ensures the timely and guaranteed delivery, management and maintenance of the services to the user. D. Strategic edge There are developing computing resources that set competition amongst technology companies. Basically, for companies, there’s little time to procure these resources. If your internet fails, then you are not able to access the services from cloud service provides. B. Security We have witnessed the best security measures being put in place by cloud service providers. Nonetheless, the storage of data and very critical files on cloud service providers always poses threats.

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To use cloud computing, a company provides most of its important data. Limited control Cloud computing is fully owned and managed by the cloud service provider. This leaves little control for the user. The user can only manage the software and data. The backend infrastructure remains entirely controllable by only the service provider. Certain administrative functions such as updating software remains to be the responsibility of the service provider. In 2013, McKinsey Company predicted that cloud computing and other emerging trends like mobile money transfer would collectively impact the economy at about $10–20 trillion when 2025 reaches. Amazon revealed in 2016 that it was the world's biggest provider of cloud computing, which now a multi-billion project valued at around $10 billion [6]. What we have seen above the trend of cloud computing is exciting and fast. In the 1990s, no one imagined Hotmail and Yahoo would ever be examples of cloud computing.

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In 2010, the Pew Internet project had collected each service through the web and software that it could think of. You don't have to worry about software licenses which are expensive or keeping the software up to date. Cloud computing has made it possible for workmates to easily and securely share documents across business premises. Business companies only use software when they need it. B. Mobilization Cloud computing is slowly shifting mobile phones. Figure 9: Trends in cloud computing The shift of cloud computing to mobile is very significant. Cloud computing makes cellphones to have the features of smartphones. In the same way, it makes tablets be able to perform the tasks we normally do on desktops and laptops. For instance, when one buys a smartphone, they don't simply do things on the phone that they normally did on their computers.

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Rather, more time online is spent using applications that you indeed, you wouldn’t have used before. This brings the argument that security could be the reason for a user to migrate to the cloud-based system rather than a reason for not using cloud services at all. B. Privacy Privacy is another developing concern. It is well understood when we talk about keeping data secure. Is there privacy of user’s data when a user uses cloud-based services? Privacy has different meanings in many parts of the world. However, cloud services centers pose a threat to the environment. What matters most is where the servers of the cloud are located and what is used to power them. If the data centers have coal powering them rather than cleaner fuels, then the threat comes.

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Facebook, Twitter, Akamai, and Amazon centers have been ranked as eco- friendly. By 2017, in Clicking Clean report, Greenpeace was congratulating about twenty of the biggest data centers for starting to use eco-friendly mechanisms in their centers [3]. In April 2018, Google declared that it had successfully replaced older sources of power to newer ones which were eco-friendly. Figure 11: Energy use in data centers Cloud computing has been predicted to integrated to a whopping $5 trillion businesses by 2020. The global consumption of power is bound to increase. From carrying out searches in Google to checking Twitter updates and the extra reliable Gmail, the benefits of cloud computing are valued very much. This means that the consumption of energy in data centers is going to increase. Cloud Computing security challenges and their compromised attributes.  International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Technology 3.

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Bulla, Chetan M. Satish S. Bhojannavar, and Vishal M.  International Journal of Recent Development in Engineering and Technology 3. Chen, Haibao, et al. A survey of cloud resource management for complex engineering applications.  Frontiers of Computer Science 10. Semsar, H. Rani, Dimpi, and Rajiv Kumar Ranjan. A comparative study of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS in Cloud Computing.  International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 4.

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