VOL. 3, NO.

6, July 2012

Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

Exploring Cloud Computing Services and Applications

Ahmed E. Youssef
Dept. of Information Systems College of Computer and Information Science KSU, Riyadh, KSA ahyoussef@ksu.edu.sa

ABSTRACT
Cloud computing environment provides a great flexibility and availability of computing resources at a lower cost. This emerging technology opens a new era of e-services in different disciplines. In this paper, we explore cloud computing services and applications, we give examples for cloud services provided by the most common Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and Sales force and we present innovative applications for cloud computing in e-learning, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and e-governance. Our study helps individuals and organizations understand how cloud computing can provide them with customized, reliable and cost-effective services in a wide variety of applications.
Keywords: Cloud Computing, ERP, e-learning, e-government, Service-Oriented Architecture, Pay-Per-Use, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS.

1. INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing is a topic that received a great deal of attention by individuals and organizations from different disciplines in the last decade [1-20]. This new environment implies great flexibility and availability of computing resources at different levels of abstraction at a lower cost. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Amazon) are vendors who lease to their customers cloud computing resources and services that are dynamically utilized based on customers demand according to a certain business model [7]. General services in different application areas such as business, education and governance are provided to the customers online and are accessed through a web browser, while data and software programs are stored on the cloud servers located in the data centres [8]. These services are generally classified into three classes known as cloud service models and are shown in figure 1. Cloud service models [1,2,12,13,18,19,22,24,26-29,34] are a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that describe cloud services at different levels of abstraction. These models are: Software as a Service (SaaS): In this model, CSPs are responsible for running and maintaining application software, operating system and computing resources. The customer views the SaaS model as a web-based application interface where services and complete software applications are delivered over the Internet and are accessed via a web browser. Customers can access hosted applications such as Gmail and Google Docs through different client devices such as laptops, iPads and cell phones. Unlike traditional software, SaaS has the advantage that the customer does not need to buy licences, install, upgrade, maintain or run software on his own computer [26]. It has also other advantages such as multitenant efficiency, configurability and scalability [27]. Examples of SaaS providers are Zoho, Google Apps and Salesforce.com. Platform as a Service (PaaS): In PaaS, a CSP provides, runs and maintains both system software (i.e., the operating system) and computing resources. The customer manages and runs the application software under the operating system and on the virtual resources provided by the CSP. The customer has little or no control over the operating system and hardware resources [26].Unlike SaaS that provides the customer with complete (ready to use) applications, PaaS gives him/her the opportunity to design, model, develop and test applications directly on the cloud; therefore, he/she can control the software lifecycle [27]. PaaS supports collaborative work between members of a project team. For instance, a number of users located in different countries can collaborate in developing a website using a PaaS cloud service. Examples of PaaS providers are windows Azure, Google Apps Engine and Aptana cloud. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): In this model, the CSP provides a set of virtualized computing resources (e.g., network bandwidth, storage capacity, memory, processing power) in the cloud. It is the responsibility of the customer to run and maintain the operating system and the software applications on these virtual recourses. IaaS uses virtualization technology [15-1723] to convert physical resources into logical resources that can be dynamically provisioned and released by customers as needed. Examples of IaaS providers are Drop Box, Amazon EC2 and Akamai. Table 1 shows the assignment of running and maintaining cloud resources to CSPs and cloud customers in different service models.

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

SaaS Gmail, Google Doc, Finance, Collaboration, Communication, Business, CRM, ERP, HR Ex. Zoho, Salesforce, Google apps PaaS Web 2 application run time, Java 2 run time, Developer tools, Middleware Ex. Windows Azure, Aptana, Google apps engine IaaS Servers, Storage, Processing power, Networking, Bandwidth Ex. Amazon web service, Dropbox, Akamai Fig 1: services provided in cloud computing environment

services are public including Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Salesforce.com. Private Cloud: In private clouds the computing resources are operated exclusively by one organization. It may be managed by the organization itself or a CSP. Private clouds are considered to be more secure than public clouds since their users are trusted individuals inside the organization. The other two deployment models, community clouds and hybrid clouds, fall between public and private clouds [12]. Community clouds: Community clouds are similar to private clouds but the cloud infrastructure and computing resources are shared by several organizations that have the same mission, policy and security requirements [24]. An example of a community cloud is the educational cloud used by universities and institutes around the world to provide education and research services. Hybrid Clouds: In hybrid clouds, the cloud infrastructure consists of a combination of two or more public, private or community cloud components. The cloud components are bound together by standardized technology and managed as a single unit, yet each cloud remains a unique entity [24, 28]. Hybrid clouds allow organizations to optimize their resources, so the critical core activities can be run under the control of the private component of the hybrid cloud while other auxiliary tasks may be outsourced to the public component. Figure 2 below shows different cloud deployment models and table 2 compares these models with each other [30].

Table 1: resource assignment in cloud service models Application Software CSP customer customer Operating System CSP CSP customer Virtual recourses/ HW CSP CSP CSP

SaaS PaaS IaaS

The cloud services described above can be provided to cloud customers by CSPs through different applications. In this paper, we explore cloud computing services and applications, we give examples for cloud services provided by the most common CSPs such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and Sales force and we present innovative applications for cloud computing in egovernment, e-learning and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The objective of our study is to help individuals and organizations understand how cloud computing can provide them with customized, reliable and cost-effective services in a wide variety of applications.

2. ANALYSIS OF CLOUD COMPUTING SYSTEMS

Cloud computing systems are classified as public cloud, private cloud, community cloud and hybrid cloud [1,12,19,22,24,28,30,34]. These classes are known as deployment models and they describe the scope of services offered on the cloud to the customers. Public Cloud: In public clouds the infrastructure and other cloud services are made available to the general public over the Internet. The cloud is owned and managed by a CSP who offers services to consumers on a pay-per-use basis. Public cloud users are by default treated as untrustworthy; therefore, security and privacy are big concerns about this type of cloud [12]. Many popular cloud

Fig 2: cloud computing deployment models

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

Table 2: A Comparison of Cloud Deployment Models Deployment model public private scope of services general public and large industry groups single organization owned by CSP single organization several organizations organizations and CSP managed by CSP single organization or CSP several organizations or CSP organizations and CSP security level low high location off premise off or on premise off or on premise off and on premise

community

hybrid

organizations that share the same mission, policy and security requirements organizations and public

high

medium

Cloud computing systems satisfy many interesting characteristics that make them promising for future IT applications and services. The National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) [14] has defined five essential characteristics for cloud computing systems [1, 19, 24, 25, 34] and we describe them below: On-demand self-service: cloud services such as web applications, server time, processing power, storage and networks can be provisioned automatically as needed by the consumers without requiring human interaction. Broad Network Access (mobility): consumers can access cloud resources over the Internet at anytime and from anywhere (i.e., ubiquitous) through different types of platform (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs). Resource Pooling: physical and virtual computing resources are pooled into the cloud. These resources are location independent in the sense that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over their location. Rapid Elasticity: computing resources can be rapidly and elastically provisioned and released based on the demand of the consumer. Consumers view these resources as if they are infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time. Measured Services: cloud resources and services are monitored, controlled and optimized by the CSPs through a pay-per-use business model. Consumers utilize these services in a way similar to utilizing electricity, water and gas. Other cloud computing characteristics are [28, 29]:

Multitenancy: a cloud provides services to multiple users at the same time. Those users share cloud resources at the network level, host level and application level, however, each user is isolated within his customized virtual application instance. Scalability: the infrastructure of cloud computing is very scalable. Cloud providers can add new nodes and servers to cloud with minor modifications to cloud infrastructure and software. Reliability: is achieved in cloud computing by using multiple redundant sites. High reliability makes the cloud a perfect solution for disaster recovery and business critical tasks. Economies of scale: in order to take advantage of economies of scale, clouds are implemented to be as large as possible. Other considerations are also taken to reduce cost such as locating the cloud close to cheap power stations and in low cost real estate. Cost effectiveness: customers are allowed to lease computing resources and purchase IT services that match their needs instead of investing in complex and expensive computing infrastructure and services. This will lower the costs of the IT services for organization and individuals. Customization: a cloud is a reconfigurable environment that can be customized and adjusted in terms of infrastructure and applications based on user demand. Efficient resource utilization: delivering resources only for as long as they are needed allows for efficient utilization of these resources.

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

Maintainability: CSPs reduce software hardware maintenance burden of the users.

and

Google Ad words and Ad Sense: which are advertising tools? Picasa: which is a tool used to exhibit product and uploading their images in the cloud.

Collaboration: PaaS allows for collaborative work between users within an organization or among different organizations. Virtualization: users do not need to worry about physical resources since the cloud isolates them at the virtual level. Green technology: cloud computing shares resources between users and does not require large resources that consume a lot of power. High performance: cloud computing technology provides users with a high performance computing environment due to extremely large storage and powerful computing resources of the cloud infrastructure.

b. Microsoft Cloud Computing Services

Microsoft provides a cloud platform called Windows Azure platform which consists of a set of cloud services offered to users and application developers. All services run in Microsoft data centers located around the world. These services include [37]: Windows Azure: a windows environment for storing data and running applications in the cloud. SQL Azure: is a relational database services in the cloud that use a special version of Microsoft SQL server. Windows Azure App Fabric: provides an infrastructure for applications that run in the cloud or inside an organization. Windows Azure Marketplace: is an online market to buy and sell application software and data.

3. CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES

Examples of cloud services provided by the most common CSPs are given in this section [32]:

a. Google Cloud Computing Services

Google integrates many applications and provides many services to cloud customers [36]. This integration makes Google one of the best CSPs since it allows clouds customers to have their tasks accomplished easily. It also saves money and time since developing and maintaining software to provide all of these services and applications is a time consuming and an expensive process. Among the services provided by Google clouds are [36]: Gmail: is an email service that provides users with 25GB storage, less spam and mobile access. It has an integrated chat applet that stores conversation in the form of email. Google Docs: is a service that allows users to create spread sheets, word documents and power point presentations and store them on the cloud servers. The documents are available online so that they can be accessed from anywhere and at anytime. This helps team members located in different countries to cooperate in completing their work. Google docs are secure since the files are encrypted using advanced encryption technology and are only accessed by authorized users. Google analytics: is used to monitor the traffic come onto a website.

c. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS provides a cloud computing platform for all business sizes. With AWS companies can provision a flexible and cost-effective IT infrastructure and services that can be scaled up and down based on their needs. AWS helps companies select the platform that is suitable for the problem they have and pay only for what they use. In addition, AWS applies advanced physical security and data privacy techniques to protect users data. AWS has security certifications and audits such as ISO 27001, FISMA moderate, HIPAA and SAS 70 Type II. AWS is a comprehensive cloud service platform which provides many web services such as [33, 35]: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2): is a web service that provides configurable computing resources in the cloud. Amazon Simple Storage Services (Amazon S3): is ascalable, secure and reliable storage for the Internet that can be used to ubiquitously store and retrieve data of any size on the web. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC): connects the companys existing IT infrastructure to AWS cloud via a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

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ISSN 2079-8407

Amazon CloudFront: is a web service for content delivery that transfers customers data with high speed and minimum delay using a global network of edge locations. Amazon Route 53: is a scalable and highly available DNS service. Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS): is a web service that helps manage a relational database in the cloud. Amazon Simple DB: provides the core database functions. Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS): is a scalable, reliable, hosted queue for storing messages. Amazon SNS: is a web service that helps manage and send notifications from the cloud. Amazon Elastic Map Reduce: is a web service that enables customers to process vast amount of data on the Cloud.

HP Cloud CDN: CDN refers to Content Delivery Networks and it is a web service that delivers data from HP Cloud Object Storage to customers around the world at high speed using global network of servers from HP and Akamai. HP Cloud Relational Databases for MySQL: is a web service that provides on-demand access to relational structured databases. HP Cloud Identity Service: provides a single method for managing HP cloud users identities and authentication.

e. Sales force Cloud Services

Sales force provides cloud computing solutions such as Service Cloud [38] and Sales Cloud [39]: Service Cloud: is a platform for customer services that allows for thousands of conversations on the Cloud. It provides different conversation tools that help empower CRM around the world such as online communities, Social networks, Phone, email & chat, Partners and Search. Sales Cloud: provides a comprehensive and easy to customize tools that deliver information to users in real time, at anytime and from anywhere. These tools include: Chatter, Mobile, Files & libraries, App Exchange and Marketing & leads.

d. HP Cloud Services
HP provides several services through its public beta and we describe these services below [21]: HP Cloud Compute: provides elastic scalable virtual servers that can be customized on users demand as the workload changes. It allows customers to save time wasted in resource configuration and to save money since customers only pay for resources they provisioned. It also provides an open standards environment that ensures portability and prevents vendor lock-in and allows for collaborative work. HP Cloud Object Storage: an online massive storage capacity that allows customers to store large amount of data such as audio and video files. It can be scaled up and down on-demand to meet storage change needs and it achieves reliability by replicating objects many times in multiple availability zones so that customers can access their data when they need it. HP Cloud Block Storage: allows customers to store data on HP Cloud resources for as long as they need and easily move it from one compute resource to another.

4. CLOUD COMPUTING APPLICATIONS

In this section, we present some applications for cloud computing:

a. Cloud Computing For E-Learning

E-learning is a new trend in education that tries to make the best use of information technology (IT). Cloud computing is an attractive environment for students, faculty members and researchers. As an emerging IT, cloud computing can provide universities and research centers with powerful and cost-effective computational infrastructure. Students can connect to campus educational services through their personal mobile devices from anywhere. Faculty members can have efficient and flexible access to their course material in their class rooms. Researchers can find articles, models and run their experiments on the cloud faster than ever [31]. Figure 3 shows services provided by an e-learning cloud.

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

Facult

Staff The Cloud Simulation Tools Files Broadcastin Education Forums Online

E-mail, Class Recording

Digital

Virtual Classroom Surveys

Virtual Labs

Multimedia Application

Shared Interactive Whiteboard

Virtual Conference & Meeting

Collaborativ e

Researche

Students

Fig 3: services provided by an e-learning Cloud

b. Cloud Computing for ERP

Traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have some limitations. As the business grows inside an organization, different software applications may be needed to manage information in many areas such as human resources, payroll, finance and administration. Obviously, purchasing, installing and maintaining such multiple types of software applications represent a challenge for business growing. Furthermore, traditional ERP systems are limited in terms of multiple user accessibility, performance and availability of resources. ERP cloud [40] refers to installing the ERP applications on the cloud infrastructure (e.g. servers in datacenters) so that they can be accessed by the organizations ubiquitously through a network connection. Therefore, with this technology, project managers do not need to worry about installing, upgrading and maintaining applications inside their organizations. In addition, ERP cloud provides organizations with cost-effective scalable resources, high availability of data and applications and multitenant accessibility. Organizations can reduce their capital expenses and achieve higher Return on Investment (ROI) and shorter payback period by leasing resources and services on the cloud rather than purchasing new equipments and software applications. This is important especially for small and medium scale business where budgets are limited. Figure 4 shows services provided by an ERP cloud.

c. Cloud Computing For E-Government

Traditional e-governance challenges such as [41]: faces different

Resources cannot scale up and down with the demands that change over time. This may result in insufficient or redundant resources SW and HW have to be frequently upgraded and maintained which costs time and money New SW licences have to be purchased

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

2009-2012 CIS Journal. All rights reserved. http://www.cisjournal.org

ISSN 2079-8407

System should be available 24x7 Limited data storage and recovery Need to provide secure environment authentication and access control Lack of accountability with highly available environment. It also relieves governments from the burden of upgrading, maintenance and licensing SW and allows them to focus on the core work. Scalable and cost effective data storage can also be provided and file replication and multiple installations in geographically separated locations can be used for data recover in case of disasters. Security approaches an techniques can be deployed on the Cloud to prevent malicious behaviour and protect data integrity and confidentiality [6,12,13,19,22,25,28,29,30,34]. Figure 5 shows services provided by e-governance Cloud.

Cloud computing technology can significantly improve the way a government functions, the services it provides to its citizens and institutions and its cooperation with other governments. It can help address these challenges by providing elastic scalable, customized and

Large Scale Organization The Cloud Supply Chain & Vendor Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Projects & HR Management Finance & Accounting Manufacturing, Production & Delivery

Small Scale Organization

Medium Scale Organization

Fig 4: Services Provided By an Erp Cloud

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

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ISSN 2079-8407

Governments G2G

Business G2B

The Cloud

Complaint Resolution System

Employee Management System

Education Management System

E-police, E-court

Water, Electricity, Gas Transportation Management System

Payment & Tax System

Healthcare & Insurance System

Agriculture and Food

Industry and Energy

Consumers G2C

Enterprise G2E

Fig 5: Services Provided By an E-Governance Cloud

5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

Cloud computing is a new emerging technology that is expected to significantly change the field of IT in the next few years and lead it for the coming decades. Numerous services and applications can be provided in the Cloud due to its many interesting and promising characteristics. In this paper, we explored some of these services and applications and we are certain that many others will see the light in the near future. Cloud services and applications are expected to attract many individuals and organizations from different disciplines and our study helps them understand the impact of these services on their work, however, cloud computing technology is not free of risks and concerns. Security and privacy issues continue to be the biggest concern on cloud computing that limits its adoption in practice. The multi-

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Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

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ISSN 2079-8407

tenancy nature and resource and data outsourcing are the main reasons for the security issue in cloud computing. Organizations and individuals are still concerned about storing and processing their sensitive data and critical applications on the cloud. They continue to raise many questions for their CSPs such as [6, 34, 46, and 47]: Where is their data located and who manages and accesses it, why is their personal information requested and who uses it and what is the fate of their data in case of disasters or when the CSP went out of business. It is not surprising that much of the future work in cloud computing will focus on developing approach that are able to address its security issues. Many approaches now focus on identifying specific cloud security risks in different areas and providing recommendations and guidelines for security and privacy in public cloud computing such as: The Cloud Security Alliance [42], The Jericho Forum Self Assessment Scheme [43], The Shared Assessments questionnaires for vendor/service provider assessment [44], The ENISA Cloud Computing Risk Assessment Report [45] and the NIST [14]. In our future work, we would like to investigate the security problem in cloud computing and propose a framework and a security model that address the security threats and mitigate risks associated with cloud computing, we hope this work will encourage organizations and individuals on further adoption of this technology.

[6]

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