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In Computer science, Cloud computing is a marketing term. In the case of electricity, users can simply use it. They do not need to worry where the electricity is from, how it is generated, or transported. At the end of the month, they will get a bill for the amount of electricity they consumed. The idea behind cloud computing is similar: The user can simply use storage, computing power, or specially crafted development environments, without having to worry how these work internally. Cloud computing is a systems architecture model for Internet-based computing. It is the development and use of computer technology on the Internet. The cloud is a metaphor for theInternet based on how the internet is described in computer network diagrams; which means it is an abstraction hiding the complex infrastructure of the internet.[1] It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided as a service,

allowing users to access technologyenabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud")[3] without knowledge of, or control over the technologies behind these servers.[4] According to a paper published by IEEE Internet Computing in 2008 "Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include computers, laptops, handhelds, se nsors, etc."[5] Cloud computing is a general concept that utilizes software as a service (SaaS), such as Web 2.0and other technology trends, all of which depend on the Internet for satisfying users' needs. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the Internet servers.
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Contents
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1 Brief 1.1 Compariso ns 1.2 Architectur e 1.3 Characteris tics 1.4 Providers 2 History 3 Political issues 4 Legal issues 5 Architecture 6 Key characteristics 7 Components 7.1 Application 7.2 Client 7.3 Infrastructu re

7.4 Platform 7.5 Service 7.6 Storage 8 Roles 8.1 Provider 8.2 User 8.3 Vendor 9 Standards 10 References 11 Other websites

[change]Brief [change]Comparisons Cloud computing is often confused with grid computing (a form of distributed computing whereby a "super and virtual computer" is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, working together to perform very large tasks), utility computing (the packaging ofcomputing resources, such

as computation and storage are provided as a measured service that have to be paid similar to a traditional public utility such as electricity)[6] and autonomic computing (computer systems capable of self-management).[7] Many cloud computing deployments are today powered by grids, have autonomic characteristics and are billed like utilities, but cloud computing can be seen as a natural next step from the grid-utility model.[8] Some successful cloud architectures have little or no centralisedinfrastructure or billing systems at all including peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and Skype.[9] [change]Architecture The majority of cloud computing infrastructure currently consists of reliable services delivered through data centers that are built on computer and storage virtualization technologies. The

services are accessible anywhere in the world, with The Cloud appearing as a single point of access for all the computing needs of consumers. Commercial offerings need to meet the quality of service requirements of customers and typically offer service level agreements. [10] Open standards and open source software are also critical to the growth of cloud computing.[11] [change]Characteristics As customers generally do not own the infrastructure or know all details about it, mainly they are accessing or renting, so they can consume resources as a service, may be paying for what they do not need instead for what they actually need to use. Many cloud computing providers have adopted the utility computing model which is analogous to how traditional public utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis.

By sharing consumable and "intangible" computing power between multiple "tenants", utilization rates can be improved (as servers are not left idle) which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development. A side effect of this approach is that "computer capacity rises dramatically" as customers do not have to engineer for peak loads.[12] Adoption has been enabled by "increased high-speed bandwidth" which makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites. [change]Providers Cloud computing is being driven by providers including Google, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! as well as traditional vendors including IBM, Intel[13],Microsoft[14] and SAP [15] . It is adopted from individual users through large enterprises as General Electric.[16][17].

[change]History The Cloud[18] is a metaphor for the Internet, [19] or more generally components and services which are managed by others.[20] The underlying concept dates back to 1960 when John McCarthy expressed his opinion that "computation may someday be organized as apublic utility" and the term Cloud was already in commercial use in the early 1990s to refer to large ATM networks.[21] By the turn of the 21st century, cloud computing solutions had started to appear on the market,[22] though most of the focus at this time was on Software as a service. Amazon.com played a key role in the development of cloud computing when upgrading their data centers after the dotcom bubble and providing access to their systems by way of Amazon Web Services in 2002 on a utility computing basis. They found the new

cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements.[23] 2007 observed increased activity, including Google, IBM and a number of universities starting large scale cloud computing research project,[24]around the time the term started gaining popularity in the mainstream press. It was a hot topic by mid-2008 and numerous cloud computing events had been scheduled.[25] In August 2008 Gartner observed that "organisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" and that the "projected shift to cloud computing will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and in significant reductions in other areas".[26] [change]Political

issues

Clouds cross many countries borders and "may be the ultimate form of globalisation"[27]. As such it is the subject of

complex geopoliticalissues, whereby providers must satisfy many legal restrictions in order to deliver service to a global market. This dates back to the early days of the Internet, where libertarian thinkers felt that "cyberspace was a distinct place calling for laws and legal institutions of its own"; authorNeal Stephenson envisaged this as a tiny island data haven called Kinakuta in his science-fiction classic novel Cryptonomicon[27]. Although there have been efforts to match the legal environment (such as US-EU Safe Harbor), providers like Amazon Web Services are currently dealing with international markets (typically the United States and European Union) by deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select their countries[28]. However there are still concerns about security and privacy from individual through governmental level, (for example

the USA PATRIOT Act and use of national security letters and title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act). [change]Legal

issues

In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term '"cloud computing" in the United States. It received a "Notice of Allowance" in July 2008 which was subsequently canceled on August 6, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application in less than a week later. In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License (abbreviated as Affero GPL and AGPL), a version of GPLv3 designed to close a perceived legal loophole associated with Free software designed to be run over a network, particularlysoftware as a service. According to

the AGPL license application service providers are required to release any changes they make to anAGPL open source code. [change]Architecture

Cloud architecture[29] is the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery ofcloud computing (eg hardware, software) as designed by a cloud architect who typically works for acloud integrator. It typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other overapplication programming interfaces (usually web services).[30]

This is very similar to the Unix philosophy of having multiple programs doing one thing well and working together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts. Cloud architecture extends to the client where web browsers and/or software applications are used to access cloud applications. Cloud storage architecture is loosely coupled where metadata operations are centralized enabling the data nodes to scale into the hundreds, each independently delivering data to applications or users. [change]Key

characteristics

Capital expenditure minimized, therefore low barrier to entry as infrastructure is

owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Services are typically being available to or specifically targeting retail consumers and small businesses. Device and location independence[31] which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using (for example PC, mobile,... etc). Multitenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, allowing for: Centralization of infrastructure in areas with

lower costs (eg real estate, electricity) Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load levels) Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10-20% utilised.[23] Performance is monitored and consistent but can be affected by insufficient bandwidth or high network load. Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery,[32] however IT and business managers are able to do little when an outage

hits them.[33] Historical data on cloud outages is tracked in the Cloud Computing Incidents Database.[34] Scalability which meets changing user demands quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. Massive scalability and large user bases are common but not an absolute requirement. Security which typically improves due to centralization of data, increased securityfocused resources, etc. but which raises concerns about loss of control over certain sensitive data. Accesses are typically logged but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible. Sustainability through improved resource utilisation,

more efficient systems and carbon neutrality.[35] [change]Components

[change]Application A cloud application influences The Cloud model of software architecture, often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, thus reducing software maintenance, ongoing operations, and support. For example:

Peer-to-peer/volunteer computing (Bittorrent, SETI@ home, Skype) Web application (Facebook) Software as a service (Google Apps, Salesforce) Software plus services (Microsoft Online Services)

[change]Client A cloud client is computer hardware and/or computer software which relies on The Cloud for application delivery, or which is specifically designed for delivery of cloud services, and which is in either case essentially useless without a Cloud.[36] For example: [37] Mobile (Android, iPhone[38], Windows Mobile[39]) Thin client (CherryPal, [40] Zonbu[41] gOS based systems[42])

Thick client/Web browser (Google Chrome[43],Mozilla Firefox)

[change]Infrastructure Cloud infrastructure (e.g. Infrastructure as a service) is the delivery of computer infrastructure (typically a platform virtualization environment) as a service.[44] For example: Full virtualization (GoGrid, Skytap) Grid computing (Sun Grid) Management (RightScale) Paravirtualization (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) [change]Platform A cloud platform (eg Platform as a service) (the delivery of a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service) facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying

and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.[45] For example: Web application frameworks Python Django (Google App Engine) Ruby on Rails (Heroku) Web hosting (Mosso) Proprietary (Azure, Force.com ) [change]Service A cloud service (eg Web Service) is "software system[s] designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network"[46]which may be accessed by other cloud computing components, software (eg Software plus services) or end users directly.[47] For example: Identity (OAuth, OpenID) Integration (Amazon Simple Queue Service)

Mapping (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps) Payments (Amazon Flexible Payments Service, Google Checkout, PayPal) Search (Alexa, Google Custom Search, Yahoo! BOSS) Others (Amazon Mechanical Turk)

[change]Storage Cloud storage is the delivery of data storage as a service (including databaselike services), often billed on a utility computing basis (eg pergigabyte per month).[48] For example: Database (Amazon SimpleDB, Google App Engine's BigTable datastore) Network attached storage (MobileMe iDisk comp onent, Nirvanix CloudNAS)

Synchronisation (Live Mesh Live Desktop component, MobileM e push functions) Web service (Amazon Simple Storage Service, Nirvanix SDN) Traditional storage vendors have recently begun to offer their own flavor of cloud storage, sometimes in conjunction with their existing software products (e.g. Symantec's Online Storage for Backup Exec). Others focus on providing a new kind of back-end storage optimally designed for delivering cloud storage (EMC's Atmos), categorically known as Cloud Optimized Storage.

[change]Roles [change]Provider A cloud computing provider or cloud computing service provider owns and

operates cloud computing systems to deliver service to third parties. Usually this requires significant resources and expertise in building and managing the next generation of data centers. Some organisations are realising a subset of the benefits of cloud computing by becoming "internal" cloud providers and servicing themselves, though they do not benefit from the same economies of scale and still have to engineer for peak loads. The barrier to entry is also significantly higher with capital expenditure required and billing and management creates some overhead. However, significant operational efficiency and quickness advantages can be achieved even by small organisations and server consolidation and virtualization rollouts are already in progress.[49]Amazon.com was the first such provider, modernising its data centers which, like most computer networks were using as little as 10% of its

capacity at any one time just to leave room for occasional spikes. This allowed small, fast-moving groups to add new features faster and easier, and they went on to open it up to outsiders as Amazon Web Services in 2002 on a utility computing basis.[23] The companies listed in the Components section are providers. [change]User A user is a consumer of cloud computing. [36] The privacy of users in cloud computing has become of increasing concern.[50] [51] The rights of users is also an issue, which is being addressed via a community effort to create a bill of rights (currently in draft).[52][53] [change]Vendor A vendor sells products and services that facilitate the delivery, adoption and use of cloud computing.[54] For example:

Computer hardware (Dell, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems) Storage (3PAR, EMC, Mogil eFS) Infrastructure (Solace Systems, Layer 7 Technologies, F5 Networks) Computer software (3tera, GigaSpaces, Hadoop) Operating systems (Windows Azure, Linux and Solaris)[55]
[56][57][58]

Platform virtualisation (Citrix, Microso ft, VMware, Sun xVM)

[change]Standards A cloud standard is one of a number of existing (typically lightweight) open

standards that have facilitated the growth of cloud computing, including:[59] Application Communications (HTTP, XM PP) Security (OAuth, OpenID, S SL/TLS[60]) Syndication (Atom) Client Browsers (AJAX) Offline (HTML 5) Infrastructure [61] Virtualization (OVF ) Platform Solution stacks (LAMP, Space-based architecture) Service Data (XML, JSON) Web Services (REST)

 Storage [change]References
1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The Internet Cloud Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Be As Influential As E-business What's the difference Between Cloud Computing and SaaS? Distinguishing Cloud Computing from Utility Computing ORGs for Scalable, Robust, Privacy-Friendly Client Cloud Computing "Its probable that youve misunderstood Cloud Computing till now". TechPluto.

 What's In A Name? Utility vs. Cloud vs Grid 8. I.B.M. to Push Cloud Computing, Using Data From Afar 9. ACM Ubiquity: Emergence of The Academic Computing Cloud 10. Rajkumar Buyya1, Chee Shin Yeo1, Srikumar Venugopal1. "MarketOriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities" (PDF). Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved on 31 July2008.
7.

 Open source fuels growth of cloud computing, software-as-a-service 12. Cloud Computing: The Evolution of Software-as-aService 13. With Their Heads in the Clouds 14. Microsoft Fueling Cloud Computing Initiatives 15. http://www.informationwee k.com/news/services/saas/s howArticle.jhtml? articleID=207601148 16. Google Apps makes its way into big business 17. Google, Inc. Q2 2008 Earnings Call 18. Cloud Computing: When Computers Really Do Rule 19. What cloud computing really means
11.

 The Internet Cloud 21. July, 1993 meeting report from the IP over ATM working group of the IETF 22. Internet Critic Takes on Microsoft 23.0 23.1 23.2 23. Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet 24. Google and I.B.M. Join in Cloud Computing Research 25. Keep an eye on cloud computing 26. Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending On Pace to Surpass $3.4 Trillion in 2008 27.0 27.1 27. Computers without borders 28. Feature Guide: Amazon EC2 Availability Zones
20.

 Building GrepTheWeb in the Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Architectures 30. Cloud Maturity Is Accelerating: More Than Just Reaction To The Hype? 31. The new geek chic: Data centers 32. Cloud Computing: Small Companies Take Flight 33. Google Apps Admins Jittery About Gmail, Hopeful About Future 34. A New Resource, Born of a Cloud Feud 35. Google to go carbon neutral by 2008 36.0 36.1 36. Nimbus Cloud Guide
29.

 Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web 38. In Sync to Pierce the Cloud 39. Microsoft demos mobile cloud sync client 40. CherryPal brings cloud computing to the masses 41. Zonbu has alluring features, price 42. GOS cloud computing 43. Google Chrome Aims to Break Microsoft Windows 44. EMC buys Pi and forms a cloud computing group 45. Google angles for business users with 'platform as a service' 46. "Web Services Glossary".
37.

 The Emerging Cloud Service Architecture 48. Google, Microsoft and Apple building online storage havens: you win 49. ACM Queue - Beyond Server Consolidation 50. ORGs for Scalable, Robust, Privacy-Friendly Client Cloud Computing 51. Google Privacy Practices Worse Than ISP Snooping, AT&T Charges 52. Draft Cloud Computing: Bill of Rights Now Available 53. Johnston, Sam; Urquhart, James; Wellner, Rich (200809-16). "Cloud Computing:Bill of rights". Retrieved 2008-09-16. 54. List of Cloud Platforms, Providers and Enablers
47.

 http://blogs.zdnet.com/ige neration/?p=500 56. http://www.itpro.co.uk/606 705/ballmer-microsoft-tolaunch-cloud-os 57. "About - What is the Azure Services Platform". Microsoft. Retrieved 200811-03. 58. Red Hat chief: 'The clouds will all run Linux' 59. The Cloud and Standards 60. Lock-in, security loom as dark side of Compute Cloud 61. LinuxWorld/Next Generation Data Center attendees get schooled in cloud computing
55.

[change]Other

websites

Chappell, David (August 2008). "A Short Introduction

to Cloud Platforms" (PDF). David Chappell & Associates. Retrieved on 20 August2008. Jones, M. Tim, Cloud Computing with Linux from IBM DeveloperWorks (2008-0910). Kaye, Russell, Cloud Computing (QuickStudy) from Computer World (2008-05-08). Martin & Hoover, Guide to Cloud Computing from InformationW eek (2008-07-21). Cloud Computing Community Wiki is a "new resource put together by several industry executives and bloggers". Cloud Computing Incidents Database (CCID) tracks and

"provides historical data on cloud outages". What is Cloud Computing ? Web 2.0 expo - A video where Tim OReilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg and others answer this question. Categories: Pages with too many red links | Computer science | Internet | Computer networking

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