THE LEADING EDGE OF NETWORKING

CLOUD COMPUTING

Project Proposal Contents: 1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 1

1.1 Aim 1.2 What is Cloud Computing? 1.3 Cloud Computing and its Working

2. Development of Cloud Computing ............................................ 3

2.1 Architecture 2.2 History 2.3 Exponential Growth

3. Cloud Storage...................................................................................... 8

3.1 Deployment of Cloud Service 3.2 Pros of Cloud Service 3.3 Battles of Cloud

4. Challenges and Risks ........................................................................ 11

4.1 Security and Privacy 4.2 Reliability and Availability 4.3 Interoperability

5. Overcoming Obstacles........................................................................ 13

6. Applications.......................................................................................... 14

7. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 15

8. References

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 AIM: To critically asses the concept, methodology and evolution of cloud computing To analyse how virtualization and cloud computing work hand in hand To illustrate a graphical analysis on cloud computing in the past five years To identify key priorities and challenges of cloud computing and its development and how

to overcome them effectively

1.2 What is CLOUD COMPUTING? In basic terms, cloud computing is the phrase used to describe different scenarios in which computing resource is delivered as a service over a network connection (usually, this is the internet). Cloud computing is therefore a type of computing that relies on sharing a pool of physical and/or virtual resources, rather than deploying local or personal hardware and software. It is somewhat synonymous with the term ‘utility computing’ as users are able to tap into a supply of computing resource rather than manage the equipment needed to generate it themselves; much in the same way as a consumer tapping into the national electricity supply, instead of running their own generator.A cloud refers to a distinct IT environment that is designed for the purpose of remotely provisioning scalable and measured IT resources. The term originated as a metaphor for the Internet which is, in essence, a network of networks providing remote access to a set of decentralized IT resources. Prior to cloud computing. This same symbol is now used to specifically represent the boundary of a cloud environmentbecoming its own formalized IT industry segment, the symbol of a cloud was commonly used to represent the Internet in a variety of specifications and mainstream documentation of Web-based architectures, as shown in Figure .

 The symbol used to denote the boundary of a cloud environment.

NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

The definition of cloud computing provided by NIST has gained significant traction within the IT industry. According to this definition (see [NIST]):

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.”

1.3 Computing Cloud and its Working

End users access cloud-based applications or services through a web browser or a lightweight desktop or mobile app (often referred to as a Client) while the business software and data are stored on servers at a remote location (off-site or off-premise). Cloud application providers strive to give the same or better service and performance as if the software programs were installed locally on end-user computers. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of infrastructure convergence (or Converged Infrastructure) and Shared Services. This type of environment allows businesses to get their applications and other services (phone, storage, content management, disaster recovery, etc.) up and running faster, with significantly reduced up-front costs, easier manageability and less maintenance. Cloud services enable IT to more rapidly adjust IT resources (such as applications, servers, storage and networking) to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.

Most websites and server-based applications run on particular computers or servers. What differentiates the cloud from the way those are set up is that the cloud utilizes the resources from the computers as a collective virtual computer, where the applications can run independently from particular computer or server configurations. They are basically floating around in a “cloud of resources”, making the hardware less important to how the applications work.With broadband� internet, the need to have the software run on your computer or on a company’s site is  becoming less and less essential. A lot of the software that people use nowadays are completely web-based. The cloud takes advantage of that to bring it to the next level. To understand how does cloud computing work, imagine that the cloud consists of layers — mostly the back-end layers and the front-end or user-end layers. The front-end layers are the ones you see and interact with. When you access your email on Gmail for example, you are using software running on the front-end of a cloud. The same is true when you access your Facebook account. The back-end consists of the hardware and the software architecture that fuels the interface you see on the front end.Because the computers are set up to work together, the applications can take advantage of all that computing power as if they were running on one particular machine. Cloud computing also allows for a lot of flexibility. Depending on the demand, you can increase how much of the cloud resources you use without the need for assigning specific hardware for the job, or just reduce the amount of resources assigned to you when they are not necessary.

2. DEVELOPMENT OF CLOUD

2.1 ARCHITECTURE

The Cloud Computing architecture comprises of many cloud components, each of them are loosely coupled. We can broadly divide the cloud architecture into two parts:

Front End Back End

Each of the ends are connected through a network, usually via Internet. The following diagram shows the graphical view of cloud computing architecture:

The Cloud Computing Architecture is divided into two parts: Front End and the Back End.They connect to each other through a network, usually the Internet.

FRONT END

Front End refers to the client part of cloud computing system. It consists of interfaces and applications that are required to access the cloud computing platforms, e.g., Web Browser.

BACK END

Back End refers to the cloud itself. It consists of all the resources required to provide cloud computing services. It comprises of huge data storage, virtual machines, security mechanism, services, deployment models, servers, etc

A central server administers the system, monitoring traffic and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It follows a set of rules called protocols and uses a special kind of

software called middleware. Middleware allows networked computers to communicate with each other. Most of the time, servers don't run at full capacity. That means there's unused processing power going to waste. It's possible to fool a physical server into thinking it's actually multiple servers, each running with its own independent operating system. The technique is called server virtualization. By maximizing the output of individual servers, server virtualization reduces the need for more physical machines.

If a cloud computing company has a lot of clients, there's likely to be a high demand for a lot of storage space. Some companies require hundreds of digital storage devices. Cloud computing systems need at least twice the number of storage devices it requires to keep all its clients' information stored. That's because these devices, like all computers, occasionally break down. A cloud computing system must make a copy of all its clients' information and store it on other devices. The copies enable the central server to access backup machines to retrieve data that otherwise would be unreachable. Making copies of data as a backup is called redundancy.

2.2 HISTORY OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Early History – Virtual Machines

The real implementation of virtual machines came in the 70s when IBM released an operating system called VM. This allowed multiple distinct computers to reside in the same processing environment, leading to the type of interactions we know call virtualization. In basic terms, it means that each individual user would have a machine with its own memory, processor, and other hardware components, but many of the resources would be shared by others.

This type of “group computing” showed companies that they could start adding network solutions without actually increasing their hardware infrastructure. It was all about provisioning the resources they already had, shifting traffic as necessary, and balancing the load on the network and bandwidth to provide better services to their customers.

The Middle Ages – The Internet Potential

Telecommunications solutions were an integral part of cloud development, and this became possible with the commercialization of the internet. The network on which it is based, though, goes back to the 60s when J.C.R. Lickliker enabled the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). This would eventually become the forerunner of the modern internet.

The notion of connecting people all over the world to access programs and data from different locations became a real possibility. By the 70s, people were really delving into the potential suggested by those first experiments in the 60s. In 1971, for example, the first email was sent, and the U.S. Department of Defense continued developing ARPANET into the internet.

In 1979, both CompuServe Information Services and The Source both went online, showing that it was possible for commercial service providers to host internet services. Still, it wasn’t until 1993 that the Mosaic browser made the internet far more graphical – something that the average user could manage. It was soon after that when Netscape launched, and then, in 1995, both Amazon and eBay appeared.

Industrial Revolution – Affordable Computing

Part of the reason for the gap between 1979 and 1993 was that computers were still not affordable or compact enough for people to have in their homes or for companies to outfit their entire staff. The 80s saw the biggest boom in computers, with IBM putting out a range of affordable personal computers and Microsoft pushing its operating system out in a large scale.

Then, in the 90s, there was finally sufficient bandwidth available to really make the internet available to the masses, which meant that all those companies that had outfitted their staff with computers now had a valid way to connect them all. Without this kind of high-speed bandwidth and software interoperability, this type of connected computing would never have worked.

Modern History – Service-Oriented Architecture

The rise of commercial networking wasn’t an easy one, and once the first bubble burst in 2000, companies had to start rethinking their business models. The lesson learned was that no matter how much money investors threw at you, you still needed a solid business plan to survive in the long run.

In the search for new ways to monetize the internet, many companies started to realize that they could provide a service model to deliver usable solutions and resources. Salesforce.com was the company that really started this trend by pioneering the concept of delivering enterprise-class applications over a simple website.

Next, in 2002, Amazon got on board the trend with Amazon Web Services. This gave users the ability to access storage, computation solutions, and other apps through the internet. In 2006 they went further with the Elastic Compute cloud (EC2), which basically let developers rent space on their computers to store and run their own apps. It was an entire infrastructure that they delivered as a service.

By 2009, most of the industry influencers were on board, with companies like Microsoft and Google delivering apps to the average consumer as well as businesses in the form of simple, accessible services.

Owning Your Cloud

The ubiquity of cloud computing has led to an environment in which companies don’t have to go to third parties to take advantage of this resource. The technology has developed to the point that organizations can effectively deploy their own private or hybrid clouds, rather than rely on public clouds. This can potentially increase performance and decrease certain costs in this area.

More importantly, a private cloud deployment gives the IT team more visibility into the back end of their system, which is particularly useful for companies that are extremely security conscious and require direct oversight on all their assets. Private cloud deployments are becoming more prevalent because they offer a lot of the same cost and convenience benefits, and they support various platforms while allowing the organization to maintain more control. The road to get to this point has been a long one, and while it may be difficult to predict exactly what the future holds, there are currently a lot of benefits to provisioning resources over a safe, secure, private network.

2.3 EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

The rise of cloud-based software has offered companies from all sectors a number of benefits, including the ability to use software from any device, either via a native app or a browser. As a

result, users are able to carry over their files and settings to other devices in a completely seamless manner. Cloud computing is about far more than just accessing files on multiple devices, however. Thanks to cloud-computing services, users can check their email on any computer and even store files using services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Cloud-computing services also make it possible for users to back up their music, files, and photos, ensuring that those files are immediately available in the event of a hard drive crash.

Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016

Analysts Examine Cloud Strategies and Adoption at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013 October 21-24 in Goa, India

The use of cloud computing is growing, and by 2016 this growth will increase to become the bulk of new IT spend, according to Gartner, Inc. 2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.Gartner describes cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered “as a service” using Internet technologies. It heralds an evolution of business in positive and negative ways. It has also become a hot industry term that has been used in many contradictory ways.“Overall, there are very real trends toward cloud platforms, and also toward massively scalable processing. Virtualization, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they'll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” said Chris Howard, research vice president at Gartner. “Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.”As public cloud computing gains greater adoption across enterprises, there’s an increased level of spending occurring on infrastructure-related services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS).  Enterprises are prioritizing how to get cloud platforms integrated with legacy systems to make use of the years of data they have accumulated.  From legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, integrating legacy systems of record to cloud-based platforms will accelerate through 2016.  Below are the key takeaways from the report:

3. CLOUD STORAGE

3.1 DEPLOYMENT OF CLOUD SERVICE

The cloud isn’t a technology. It’s more of an approach to building IT services – an approach that harnesses the power of servers, as well as virtualization technologies that combine servers into large computing pools and divide single servers into multiple virtual machines. And there are several different deployment models for implementing cloud technology, and each has its advantages and disadvantages with significant implications for any organization researching or actively considering a cloud deployment.The three primary types of cloud deployment models are as follows :

Public Cloud: A public cloud service is built on an external platform run by a cloud-service provider. With this off-site cloud service, users get their own cloud within a shared infrastructure. The provider offers everything from system resources to the security and maintenance of your cloud system. Since it is managed by an outside company specializing in cloud services for a large range of customers, a public cloud system is great for organizations that want more elasticity, cost-effectiveness and the latest technology.

Private Cloud: A private cloud service is a cloud platform built within your own walls on your own hardware and software. Since a private cloud is managed by your own internal IT team, it is ideal for businesses that want exclusive access, more flexibility and greater control over their cloud. To use a private cloud service, however, organizations build their own data centers, making it a costlier cloud option.

Hybrid Cloud: A hybrid cloud service employs both private and public clouds. In a hybrid cloud system, an organization’s own IT team manages part of the cloud in-house and the rest off-site. For instance, a hybrid cloud system is perfect for an organization that wants to manage business-related data (such as customer files) in-house but wants to store less-sensitive information with a third party. Hybrid cloud systems are used by all types of organizations but are 46 percent more likely to be used by larger organizations with more than 1,000 employees.

Classification based upon service providedBased upon the services offered, clouds are classified in the following ways:

1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) involves offering hardware related services using the principles of cloud computing. These could include some kind of storage services (database or disk storage) or virtual servers. Leading vendors that provide Infrastructure as a service are Amazon EC2, Amazon S3,Rackspace Cloud Servers and Flexiscale.

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) involves offering a development platform on the cloud. Platforms provided by different vendors are typically not compatible. Typical players in PaaS are Google’s Application Engine, Microsofts Azure, Salesforce.com’s force.com

3. Software as a service (SaaS) includes a complete software offering on the cloud. Users can access a software application hosted by the cloud vendor on pay-per-use basis. This is a well-established sector. The pioneer in this field has been Salesforce.coms offering in the online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space. Other examples are online email providers like Googles gmail and Microsofts hotmail, Google docs and Microsofts online version of office called BPOS (Business Productivity Online Standard Suite).

3.2 PROS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

1. Worldwide Access : Cloud computing increases mobility, as you can access your documents from any device in any part of the world. For businesses, this means that employees can work from home or on business trips, without having to carry around documents. This increases productivity and allows faster exchange of information. Employees can also work on the same document without having to be in the same place.

2. More Storage : In the past, memory was limited by the particular device in question. If you ran out of memory, you would need a USB drive to backup your current device. Cloud computing provides increased storage, so you won’t have to worry about running out of space on your hard drive.

3. Easy Set-Up : You can set up a cloud computing service in a matter of minutes. Adjusting your individual settings, such as choosing a password or selecting which devices you want to connect to the network, is similarly simple. After that, you can immediately start using the resources, software, or information in question.

4. Automatic Updates : The cloud computing provider is responsible for making sure that updates are available – you just have to download them. This saves you time, and furthermore, you don’t need to be an expert to update your device; the cloud computing provider will automatically notify you and provide you with instructions.

5. Reduced Cost : Cloud computing is often inexpensive. The software is already installed online, so you won’t need to install it yourself. There are numerous cloud computing applications available for free, such as Dropbox, and increasing storage size and memory is affordable. If you need to pay for a cloud computing service, it is paid for incrementally on a monthly or yearly basis. By choosing a plan that has no contract, you can terminate your use of the services at any time; therefore, you only pay for the services when you need them.

3.3 BATTLES OF CLOUD COMPUTING:

1. Security: When using a cloud computing service, you are essentially handing over your data to a third party. The fact that the entity, as well as users from all over the world, are accessing the same server can cause a security issue. Companies handling confidential information might be particularly concerned about using cloud computing, as data could possibly be harmed by viruses and other malware. That said, some servers like Google Cloud Connect come with customizable spam filtering, email encryption, and SSL enforcement for secure HTTPS access, among other security measures.

2. Privacy : Cloud computing comes with the risk that unauthorized users might access your information. To protect against this happening, cloud computing services offer password protection and operate on secure servers with data encryption technology.

3. Loss of Control : Cloud computing entities control the users. This includes not only how much you have to pay to use the service, but also what information you can store, where you can access it from, and many other factors. You depend on the provider for updates and backups. If for some reason, their server ceases to operate, you run the risk of losing all your information.

4. Internet Reliance :While Internet access is increasingly widespread, it is not available everywhere just yet. If the area that you are in doesn’t have Internet access, you won’t be able to open any of the documents you have stored in the cloud.

4. CHALLENGES AND RISKS

4.1 SECURITY AND PRIVACY :

Security is the first thing that leaps to mind when you start thinking about putting data online.You’re no longer responsible for it just on your own premises, but also in a very public space which is fairly notorious for being the playground for script-kiddies and malicious hackers.Before you export all of your company accounting data into the latest and greatest online accounting package, you need to take a few things into consideration:

Transport Layer Security — Traditional forms of encryption for internet traffic are under attack and are no longer completely reliable

Software Auditing — All software used to provide access to the service needs to be audited and maintained against vulnerabilities. This includes web server software, middleware application layer software such as PHP or .NET, all libraries used, database software, the actual code for the service, javascript code (because we all love Web 2.0), administrative service software, operating system etc.

Data Storage Security — We need to know that our data is actually stored in a secure way, that is not accessible to other users of the service or to any Joe Soap that walks into a hosting facility, and that also has protection from hardware failures etc.

Personnel Security — What level of auditing of personnel is performed by the provider? How much access do they have to actual data? What access controls, deprovisioning methods, and account management facilities are in place? Remember the Shionogi incident!

4.2 RELIABILITY AND AVAILABILITY :

Besides security, cloud providers are also responsible for reliability and availability, because all users expect the highest level of QoS (Quality of Service). The cloud providers use some solutions such as partitioning to achieve maximum performance. But according to whether the cloud is based on public, private, or hybrid, the management and control of these performance parameters from RAS viewpoint will vary.

Cloud providers guarantee that their servers’ uptime compares well with cloud users’ own data centers and cloud providers ensure the clients which providers can handle their applications. An enterprise must be assured that a cloud provider is faithfully running a hosted application and delivering valid results. Scheduled and unscheduled maintenance is another availability factor that exists and it can harm the control of all VM that are under the hypervisor control. Consequently, cloud technology has some problems in RAS that it has inherited from virtualization technology. One such problem involves overflows of system due to excessive combination of VM to a physical server that affects availability and reliability. Because of these issues, cloud systems are vulnerable to traditional attacks as well as new attacks that some of them have migrated from virtualization.

4.3 INTEROPERABILITY :

As the hype over cloud computing evolves into a more substantive discussion, one thing has become clear -- customers do not want to be locked into a single cloud provider. They would like the freedom to move among the clouds -- ideally from public to private and back again. This would give customers the freedom to switch providers as their computing needs grow or shrink, and the ability to move applications and workloads around as their business requirements change.Like the word "cloud" itself, interoperability can mean different things to different people. One can mean the ability of applications to move from one environment to the next -- from Savvis to Amazon, for instance, and for the applications to work exactly the same in both places. Another might mean applications running in different clouds being able to share information, which might require having a common set of interfaces.The essence of the problem, though, is that each vendor's cloud environment supports one or more operating systems and databases. Each cloud contains hypervisors, processes, security, a storage model, a networking model, a cloud API, licensing models and more. Rarely, if ever, do two providers implement their clouds in exactly the same way, with all the same moving pieces.

CLOUD INTEROPERABILITY OBSTACLES When you decide to move an application between clouds, there are challenges. These include:

1. Rebuilding the application and application stack in the target cloud.2. Setting up the network in the target cloud to give the application the support that it had in

its original cloud.3. Setting up security to match the capabilities provided by the source cloud.4. Managing the application running in the target cloud.5. Handling data movement and the encryption of data while it is in transit and when it gets

to the target cloud

5. OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

Overcoming Challenges comes from PASS testing which includes assessments of performance, availability, security and scalability. PASS testing is done on infrastructure components such as servers, network elements, storage devices and virtual appliances. It is also performed at the system level to ensure the assembled components still perform correctly when used together by applications.

PASS Testing for Cloud Computing Environments

Cloud computing environments are different than traditional data center environments and create an array of new challenges. Some of the challenges show up in PASS testing:

Performance Measuring : The performance of a cloud computing environment is not sufficiently done with one or even a dozen tests. Many hundreds of individual measurements—including throughput and latency of virtual switches, virtual appliances, converged network adapters (CNA), top of rack switches, data center cross-connects and various applications— are required to fully characterize cloud performance. Then, a good portion of these tests must be repeated under a variety of different conditions. What happens, for instance, when server and storage traffic are simultaneously reaching peaks? Will virtual switches within hypervisors keep up with high network traffic when applications are competing for the same CPU?

Availability : Availability in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds is enhanced by capabilities such as live migration, dynamic resource scheduling and automatic restarts. Yet these same features have the potential to create problems of their own. Since live migrations happen when load on the infrastructure is high, they place additional demand on resources that are already scarce. The net result may actually be further performance or availability degradation. PASS testing must be used to measure VM downtime during live migrations. Testing should include moving VMs, along with their running applications, from heavily loaded servers. It should also include measuring failover time for dozens of simultaneous high availability restarts due to a physical server failure.

Security : Multi-tier applications—consisting of web, application and database tiers— produce network traffic multiple times during each transaction. Attempts at tuning performance may result in accidental vulnerabilities. With cloud computing, security must address targeted attacks, viruses and other risks while maintaining the performance, availability and scalability for all cloud tenants. PASS testing helps uncover vulnerabilities and can also be used to determine the right mix of physical and virtual security appliances. This is an important consideration since every CPU cycle spent checking security cannot be sold to customers.

Scalability : Cloud environments tend to be quite large, from hundreds of servers to tens of thousands. Consider a cloud infrastructure with a thousand servers. It will have many thousands of cores supporting tens of thousands of VMs. This type of density leads to a huge increase in network traffic. Scalability testing must not only validate that tens of thousands of VMs can operate simultaneously, it must confirm they can do so with peak traffic rates across all layers of the network.

6. APPLICATIONS

Even if all of these research areas could be addressed satisfactorily, one important challenge remains. No information technology will be useful unless it enables new applications, or dramatically improves the way existing applications are built or run. Although the effectiveness of cloud computing has already been demonstrated for some applications, more work should be done on identifying new classes of novel applications that can only be realized using cloud computing technology. With proper instrumentation of potential applications and the underlying cloud infrastructure, it should be possible to quantitatively evaluate how well these application classes perform in a cloud environment. Along these same lines, experimental software engineering research should be conducted to measure how easily new cloud-based applications can be constructed relative to non-cloud applications that perform similar functions. This research should also compare the dependability of similar cloud and non-cloud based applications running in production environments. Application-focused research will help organizations make well-informed business decisions on where to apply cloud technology, and give cloud technology developers guidance on what kinds of improvements to the technology will provide the greatest benefits to application developers and end users.

APPLICATIONS :

Big data analytics :

One of the aspects offered by leveraging cloud computing is the ability to tap into vast quantities of both structured and unstructured data to harness the benefit of extracting business value.Retailers and suppliers are now extracting information derived from consumers’ buying patterns to target their advertising and marketing campaigns to a particular segment of the population. Social networking platforms are now providing the basis for analytics on behavioral patterns that organizations are using to derive meaningful information.

File storage:

Cloud can offer you the possibility of storing your files and accessing, storing and retrieving them from any web-enabled interface. The web services interfaces are usually simple. At any time and place you have high availability, speed, scalability and security for your environment. In this, organizations are only paying for the amount of storage they are actually consuming, and do so scenario without the worries of overseeing the daily maintenance of the storage infrastructure.There is also the possibility to store the data either on or off premises depending on the regulatory compliance requirements. Data is stored in virtualized pools of storage hosted by a third party based on the customer specification requirements.

Disaster Recovery:

This is yet another benefit derived from using cloud based on the cost effectiveness of a disaster recovery (DR) solution that provides for a faster recovery from a mesh of different physical locations at a much lower cost that the traditional DR site with fixed assets, rigid procedures and a much higher cost.

Backup:

Backing up data has always been a complex and time-consuming operation. This included maintaining a set of tapes or drives, manually collecting them and dispatching them to a backup facility with all the inherent problems that might happen in between the originating and the backup site. This way of ensuring a backup is performed is not immune to problems such as running out of backup media , and there is also time to load the backup devices for a restore operation, which takes time and is prone to malfunctions and human errors.

 Collaboration:

Cloud apps give employees access to their information from anywhere around the globe. All you need is an Internet connection. This allows more collaborative working as multiple people can view and edit the same information at once, ensuring your team works efficiently.

Automatic Updates:

 Software as a service (SaaS) allows companies to ensure all users of their application are on the same version of the software. This is because they can provide automatic updates to cloud applications, rather than waiting for users to do it themselves. This also helps with support, as the company will know what version of the software is being used when issues are logged.

7. CONCLUSION

Cloud computing is a new way of delivering computing resources, not a new technology. Computing services ranging from data storage and processing to software, such as email handling, are now available instantly, commitment-free and on-demand. Since we are in a time of belt-tightening, this new economic model for computing has found fertile ground and is seeing massive global investment. The key conclusion of this research paper on Cloud Computing, is that the cloud’s economies of scale and flexibility are both a friend and a foe from a security point of view. The massive concentrations of resources and data present a more attractive target to attackers, but cloud-based defences can be more robust, scalable and cost-effective. This Research paper allows an informed assessment of the security risks and benefits of using cloud computing - providing security guidance for potential and existing users of cloud computing. It also aims to provide a knowledge of the main applications of Cloud Computing, stating both pro’s as well as cons. Cloud computing presents a compelling opportunity for consumers of IT and producers of information services . Gartner Research also found that cloud computing ranked as the top technical priority of chief information officers in 2011 . However, adopting cloud computing is a complex process involving many factors. It needs rigorous evaluation before introducing the new computing model to an organization. This paper focuses on 4 aspects of evaluation and strategic planning, which will assist health organizations in determining whether (or how) to migrate from traditional to cloud-based health services.

8. REFERENCES

1. Gartner Research on Cloud Computing - http://www.gartner.com/it/initiatives/pdf/KeyInitiativeOverview_CloudComputing.pdf

2. Working of Cloud Computing- https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/how-cloud- computing-works

3. Reliability and Availability of Cloud Computing – A book by Eric Bauer and Randy Adams ERIC BAUER is a reliability engineering manager in the Software, Solutions and Services Group of Alcatel-Lucent. The holder of more than a dozen U.S. patents, he is the author of Design for Reliability: Information and Computer-Based Systems, Beyond Redundancy: How Geographic Redundancy Can Improve Service Availability and Reliability of Computer-Based Systems, and Practical System Reliability, also available from Wiley-IEEE Press.RANDEE ADAMS is a consulting member of technical staff in the Software, Solutions and Services Group of Alcatel-Lucent and the coauthor of Beyond Redundancy: How Geographic Redundancy Can Improve Service Availability and Reliability of Computer-Based Systems. http://www.cloudstrategymag.com/products/537-reliability-and-availability-of-cloud-computing

4. http://www.cloudstrategymag.com/products/537-reliability-and-availability-of-cloud- computing

5. Obstacles of cloud computing - http://memeburn.com/2011/09/4-big-obstacles-for-cloud-computing/

6. Gartner’s Approach on Cloud Computing - http://ospero.com/blog/item/421-cloud- computing-growth-according-to-gartner.html