Mobile Cloud Storage : Comparative System Development Methodology

Cloud computing is the practice of using remote storage for applications and data. The idea itself is not a new one; it has been in use for many years albeit under different names. In the earliest days of the computer age machines had to be physically large to contain the hardware required to do their jobs. It was impractical and prohibitively expensive to provide one of these mainframes for individual users; not to mention for what they were used for, unnecessary. Instead, one central computer was wired to several terminals that users could interface with. Typically, only large organizations such as, major corporations or government agencies could afford one of these machines or had need of one. This was the birth of cloud computing. Until the early 1980s this system was typical for any organization requiring large amounts of processing power. It was considered unnecessary and difficult to put the nuts and bolts of applications onto users’ desktop machines. Rather, by keeping applications in a central location, they could be managed and updated more easily and large amounts of storage space and processing power were not needed on desktop machines. Indeed, before this time there were no desktop machines mass produced that could achieve this level of power. This was about to change.

There are two different types of cloud storage. Public cloud is what can be accessed through the internet and companies loved this because they only paid for the amount of storage needed, they gained office apace since they did not have it installed in their own company, it can be used by multiple customers and did not have to be worried about maintenance responsibilities. The risk factor for public cloud storage was too high as all the company’s information was held at a third party location. Private cloud is similar to public storage except that it is hosted by a private service provider site, supports one customer and can be used to store highly classified material without risk of being stolen. Lastly, integrated backup systems were the best solution to backup information. Though the price was very high for all the equipment you needed to buy it came with a strong performance and quick recovery of compromised data.

Business owners use three types of cloud service, public, private, and hybrid these clouds store their data and provide them with services. The benefits of these clouds are endless, additionally, they saves businesses time and money, promoting innovation, enhancing productivity, and improving communication while cloud hosting accelerate information sharing, like email, application hosting, web-based phone, and data storage (Griffith, 2013).

Cloud because of its wide range of applications it allows users to store data their data remotely in the cloud and enjoy the on-demand high quality cloud applications and reveal burden from the local storage, cost and maintenance. In this according to the user’s perspective, including both individuals (private) and enterprises like companies appealing the cloud benefits by storing data remotely into the cloud in a flexible on-demand manner and relief of the burden of storage management along with this he/she can also enjoy the universal data access which dependent geographical locations and avoidance of the capital expenditure, software, hardware and personnel management and maintenances and so on.

Along with the development speed of technology, the amount of data passing by or consumed by people around the world keeps growing rapidly. The storage devices seem to unable for storing growing data amount. In addition, maintenance and back-up of data are needed just in case of accident. To meet the needs mentioned above, the cloud computing is developed especially cloud storage which have become a necessary data storage for everyone recently. There are four competitive huge cloud storages in the IT industry – Google Drive, SkyDive, ICoud, Dropbox.

Cloud storage is a new concept based on cloud computing, it is a model of data storage where the digital data is stored in logical pools, the physical storage spans multiple servers (and often locations), and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a hosting company. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible, and the physical environment protected and running. People and organizations buy or lease storage capacity from the providers to store user, organization, or application data. So cloud storage is a cloud computing system that aims on storing and managing data.

Centralisation of IT and specifically data storage is becoming a more desirable option in the cloud. It provides a central point where data can be managed and release the technical problems that previous staff had in backing up and maintaining hardware. With a centralised approach come models such as hybrid, private, and public, these provide choice in services and security. In having a choice CIO’s can strategically design an infrastructure built for their companies needs.

The cloud aims to cut costs, and help the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT obstacles Cloud computing is so named because the information being accessed is found in the "clouds", and does not require a user to be in a specific place to gain access to it. The services are offered from data centres all over the world, which collectively are referred to as the "cloud." The idea of the "cloud" is to simplify the huge network connections and computer systems involved in online services. Cloud computing is a computing model, not a technology. In this model of computing, all the servers, networks, applications and other elements related to data centres are made available to IT and end users. Cloud computing is a type of computing that is comparable to grid computing. It relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications.

So, what is actually cloud computing and how does it work? “Cloud computing refers to a model of computing that provides access to a shared pool of computing resources (computers, storage, applications, and services), over a network, often the Internet. These “clouds” of computing resources can be accessed on an as-needed basis from any connected device and location” (Kenneth 2012). So basically cloud computing connects one device to another device through the Internet, and it could share virtually any type of file from one device to another. There are three main types of cloud services: public, private and hybrid. All three services addresses different requirement and concerns, and they have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Private Cloud - When the Cloud is dedicated and hence is designed to distribute application and information to any particular organization. The organization has the full control over such cloud.

The data is stored into cloud by cloud customers to enjoy the high quality networks, servers, services and applications from a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Advantages of cloud computing ubiquitous network access, transference of risk, location independent resource pooling. Sensitive data example personal health records may have to be encrypted by data owners before outsourcing to the commercial public cloud to protect data privacy and combat unsolicited accesses in the cloud and beyond.

Cloud computing is the complete opposite of using your hard drive. Local storage means running applications and programs from your hard drive in your computer. “Everything you need is physically close to you, which means accessing your data is fast and easy, for that

The conceptualization of cloud computing can be explained from the below drawn figure. There are mainly two types of

Everyone is going to the “cloud” for storage, but what exactly does that mean? Where is the cloud and is it secure? What are the benefits of storing data on the Cloud?

Dating back to the 1950’s, cloud storage started as a mainframe form of computing. Because it was so expensive to buy and maintain mainframe computers for each employee, they purchased one where multiple users had access to it through dumb terminals. At the time, employees didn’t need big storage sizes or processing power. In the 1970’s, the virtual machine was created. It took the mainframe to the next level by allowing several different computing environments to exist in one physical environment. It was possible to perform one more operating systems at the same time in an isolated environment. By the 1990’s telecommunications companies started to over virtualized private network connections to give organizations access to the same physical infrastructure. This was a big deal because before the telecommunications companies only offered single dedicated