Cloud Computing as a New and Evolving Domain of the Field of Computers - Research Paper Example

?Cloud Computing of the of the The advent of computers has created new opportunities for businesses as theycan offer their products and services on the web. The traditional form of computing proves to be inefficient since its limited scale cannot cater the increasing demands of the customers. The attainment of a greater IT infrastructure for the provision of an effective service tends to cost heavy amounts for the company. An innovative and cost effective concept has been devised to enable dynamic allocation of computing power as per needs of the organization- cloud computing. Cloud computing facilitates the dynamic attainment of computing units that can be released when the need ceases to exist. Such services prove to cut IT expenses for organizations and facilitate the business of individuals who do not have huge funds. 1. Introduction Computers have caused revolutionary changes in almost every field of life; education benefits from the concept of e-learning, businesses benefit from the invention of data centers and information management systems. All of these platforms require an effective and elaborate infrastructure to provide their clients with an uninterrupted service. This requires the individual programmers or organizations to heavily invest in the purchase, maintenance and thus administration of their infrastructure. The innovative concept of cloud computing saves such costs and provides an effective approach to manage the computing needs. Cloud computing is a new and evolving domain of the field of computers that has gained much acceptance in a very short span of time. Reference [1] defined cloud computing as a platform as well as a type of an application. This innovative concept offers the dynamic availability of servers, virtual CPUs, networks, software applications etc. There are broadly three types of cloud computing services; Platform as a Service (PaaS): Reference [2] stated that the platforms are used by developers to run applications or develop new ones. It dynamically offers all the components like (operating systems, server hardware) that would be needed for such execution or development. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This service offers the availability of servers, networks, virtual CPUs, storage to fulfill the computing needs of the client. Software as a Service (SaaS): Reference [3]; the traditional use of software required the installation on a system but the innovative techniques of cloud computing do not possess any such prerequisite. The users can attain the operation rights to the software without any prior installation since the software runs on the data centers of the cloud computing service providers. All of these services are providing the levels of convenience and ease that have never been offered before. Reference [4] explained that organizations do not have to spend hefty amounts on the establishment of the infrastructure since all the computing needs are only a few clicks away. Reference [5] stated that the computing power that is acquired, with respect to some need, can be released when the need ceases to exist. The paper discusses the main characteristics of cloud computing that have gained fame for the respective technology. Section 2 discusses the traditional form of computing; alongside its limitations and constraints that make it inefficient to cater the growing needs of the modern times. Section 3 discusses the level of its success and predicted revenues for the future. It also discusses the main characteristics of cloud computing services that have overcome the limitations of the traditional form of computing. Section 4 involves a brief analysis of the merits and demerits of the technology. Section 5 discusses the top vendors in the industry that provide these web services. Section 6 concludes the report with an accumulation of the research findings. 2. Traditional data centers The traditional form of computing involved minimal level of scalability, due to which, investments had to be made to increase the volume of the infrastructure. The need for greater infrastructure usually arose in the days when there was an increasing demand of service from the customers, for example, an online shopping website would experience a greater influx of requests and traffic in the holidays shopping season. The bombardment of requests either crashed the servers or denial of service instances took place. The company used to purchase more servers and bandwidth to cater to the requests of the customers and to be able to offer an uninterrupted service. The increased infrastructure provided great benefits to the company when there was heavy traffic but proved to be an overhead for the organization for the rest of the year. Cloud computing provides effective solutions for such dilemmas. 3. Cloud computing Organizations and individuals are able to attain low cost and more effective performance with the aid of cloud computing. As per the results of a survey conducted by Gartner Inc. [6]; cloud computing is believed to be at the top rank of the list of technologies for the present year, as shown in Table 1. The survey included feedbacks of over 2000 CIOs from around the world. Table 1: Rank of cloud computing in the list of technologies for 2011 [6] According to a research conducted by IDC [8]; the overall market of cloud computing will increase up to $42.3 billion by 2012. It was earlier recorded as $16.2 billion in 2008; this reflects an impressive increment of around 24% every year. The relationship between the different participating figures in cloud computing are shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Users and providers of cloud computing [4] The main characteristics of this innovative technology are explained below: 3.1 Scalability Reference [9] stated that cloud computing enables users to acquire numerous computing units at the same time, according to their need. This level of scalability offers many benefits to the users since the resources can be released as soon as they are not required. The acquisition of the computing units is a self-service therefore no delays are witnessed in the provision of the required infrastructure. Reference [7] explained that cloud computing has also greatly benefitted small and medium sized organizations since they do not have huge reserves for purchasing extensive IT infrastructures. 3.2 Mobility Cloud computing offers high level of mobility to the IT infrastructure. The data and intellectual assets of the organization are stored in the data centers of the cloud computing service providers. The data can be accessed anywhere via the internet. Such mobility facilitates the sharing of data with other partners. Reference [10] highlighted another benefit of mobility; it facilitates the displacement of an organization from one location to the other since no physical movement of infrastructure is involved. 3.3 Cost As explained earlier, the attainment of greater infrastructure tends to become vital for organizations in the days of increased business. The heavy investments benefit the organization only for a small period of time and end up becoming a major liability. Cloud computing offers an attractive form of costing; ‘metering’. Reference [1] explained that the costing mechanism of cloud computing services resembles the payment of the electricity grids in the houses. The cost is equivalent to the number of computing units, alongside the duration for which the unit was utilized. This results in significant reduction in the costs of the IT expenses since it does not involve any initial investments or maintenance expenses. 3.4 Maintenance and update requirements There exists lot of competition between the cloud computing service providers. The degree of competition compels the service providers to offer the best possible service to their clients. The traditional form of IT infrastructure required regular updates but cloud computing eradicates all such needs. 4. Merits and demerits of cloud computing The merits and demerits of cloud computing have been highlighted below: 4.1 Merits Reduces cost of initial investments and maintenance. Resources can be released when the need ceases to exist. Increases mobility and scalability. Reduces the number of human resources that would be required for the administration and maintenance of the IT infrastructure. 4.2 Demerits Partial control is possessed by the organization since the data does not physically reside in their premises. The client is not aware about the location of the data since it is chosen by the cloud computing service provider. The lack of knowledge regarding the security measures for the clients’ data may become a cause of distress for the clients. Security and privacy concerns are associated with the concept. This inhibits its application by some professionals. The concepts of sharing valuable intellectual assets on remote servers and accessing them through the internet do not seem secure enough for many business owners. Reference [11] pointed out that such business owners tend to worry about the exposure of their information to unauthentic third parties. Access of data is dependent on the mercy of the network connections. In case of non-availability of the internet connection, the data cannot be accessed. Reference [11] stated that there always exists a backup plan for any web service provided by the organizations. Such an approach should also be adopted with cloud computing to ensure an uninterrupted service to the client. 5. Cloud computing service providers Amazon, Microsoft and Google are the major cloud computing service providers. Initially, it was considered as an unwise move for Amazon to jump into the web services industry from an online retailer industry, but they have proved themselves in the market and continue to provide their clients with reliable and efficient cloud computing services. Reference [12] pointed out two of them; Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon CloudFront. Google Apps and Azure have been launched in the market to provide cloud computing power to the clients by Google and Microsoft, respectively. 6. Conclusion Cloud computing has provided the dynamic availability of computing power that can help businesses to cater almost unlimited requests from their customers. Large sized companies can adopt these services to cut their costs. Medium and small sized organizations can avoid the hefty initial infrastructure investments. Individual programmers also do not have huge reserves to set up an extensive IT infrastructure therefore cloud computing provides them the opportunity to run their business at significantly low costs. Software applications and platforms require regular updates from their respective companies to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies; this proves to be a constant maintenance expense for organizations; cloud computing requires no such maintenance or updates. The innovative technology has been widely accepted around the world, however, there have been some concerns prevailing in the market regarding security and privacy of data. The root of the problem is that this new technology is being used with older standards of privacy and security. Future research should investigate the techniques ad approaches that can be adopted to increase the effectiveness of these aspects of cloud computing. Some efforts must also be done for the formulation of security standards of cloud computing services. References [1] G. Boss, P. Malladi, D. Quan, L. Legregni, H. Hall, Cloud Computing, Harold Hall, IBM Coporation, 2007. [2] W. Warr, Cloud computing, 2009, http://www.qsarworld.com/files/Cloud-computing.pdf [3] E. Knorr, G. Gruman, What cloud computing really means, Info World, 2009. [4] M. Armbrust, Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, University of California, Technical Report, 2009. [5] B. White, J. Brown, C. Deale, A. Hardin, Collaboration Using Cloud Computing and Traditional Systems, Issues in Information Systems, Volume X, No. 2, 2009. [6] Gartner, Inc., Gartner Executive Programs Worldwide Survey of More Than 2,000 CIOs Identifies Cloud Computing as Top Technology Priority for CIOs in 2011, Business Week, 2011 [7] R. King, Cloud Computing: Small Companies Take Flight, Business Week, August Issue, 2008. [8] R. Perry, E. Hatcher, R. Mahowald, S. Hendrick, Cloud Platform Drives Huge Time to Market and Cost Savings, IDC, 2009. [9] M. Miller, The Changing Cloud Platforms: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and More, PCMag, 2010. [10] T. Laplante, Mobility– Cloud Computing’s Partner in Crime, Central Penn Business Journal Gadget Cube, February Issue, 2011 [11] A. Moscaritolo, Report: Privacy issues plague cloud computing, SC Magazine, 2009. [12] Amazon Web Services, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), 2011, http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ Read More