The Underlying Concept Of Cloud Computing

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.

Cloud computing describes anything involving the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. The service takes it names from the cloud symbol used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams. Due to significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, along with improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, interest in cloud computing has increased substantially in recent years (TechTarget, 2007).

Cloud computing has been defined by NIST as 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 cloud provider interaction. Cloud computing can be considered a new computing paradigm insofar as it allows the utilization of a computing infrastructure at one or more levels of abstraction, as an on-demand service made available over the Internet or other computer network.

Cloud computing is the result of evolution and adoption of existing technologies and prototypes; although the origin of the term cloud computing is unclear. In the earliest stages, the term ‘cloud’ was used to represent the computing space between the provider and the end user. References to cloud computing in its modern sense appeared as early as 1996, with the earliest known mention in a Compaq internal document (Regalado, 2011). In 1997, Professor Ramnath Chellapa of Emory University and the University of South California defined cloud computing as the new “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone”. This has become the basis of what we refer to today when we discuss

Moving forward 30 years to 1997, is when the term “cloud computing” was first used by information systems professor Ramnath Chillappa. Within a few years, companies began switching from hardware to cloud services; they were attracted to the benefits like the reduction in capital costs as well as an easing in IT staff; the number one benefit being efficiency.

The idea of cloud computing was first initially introduced by J.C.R Licklider in 1969 who introduced the idea as “Intergalactic Computer Network” [1]. He envisioned a future where everyone on the planet was connected/interconnected together accessing information, data, programs and so on from anywhere in the world. A comments was made by Margaret Lewis who is the product marketing director at AMD who said in 2010 that J.C.R Licklider idea in 1969 “the idea sounds a lot like what we are calling cloud computing” [1, 2]. Some believe the idea was first discussed by John McCarthy who discussed it in a public venue at a speech that was celebrating MIT centennial who said “that computer time-sharing technology might result in a future in which computing power and even specific applications could be sold through the utility business model (like water or electricity)”[3].

In the last few years, the advancement of cloud computing technology has revolutionized the IT infrastructure and business model of many organizations. Businesses from green field startups, to enterprises and market giants have repositioned their services and infrastructure to take benefits of Cloud computing models. Cloud technology is leveraged by the underlying infrastructure and virtualization techniques that make the magic of on demand resource allocation, service orchestration possible. While the Internet provides the ubiquitous access necessary for utilization of the cloud services.

Cloud Computing is a new paradigm of large-scale distributed computing which is rapidly becoming one of the hottest topic among business organisations (Pallis, 2010), and represents a fundamental change in the way of Information Technology (IT) services are invented, developed, deployed, scaled, updated, maintained and paid for (Martson et al, 2011).

Cloud computing, in its most basic form, is “using computer services [such as computer and data storage, management and processing] that are delivered over a network” (Kim & Solomon, 2013, p. 189). For example, an organization may require a great deal of storage for their data but may not want to purchase the servers, the physical space for the servers, or the personnel to manage the infrastructure. Instead, they take advantage of the many cloud computing options and outsource their needs, hiring someone to do everything off-site usually with the goal of reducing their overall cost of ownership. As defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing has five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models (Mell & Grance, 2011) which will be covered, briefly, in the next few sections.

Cloud computing has evolved with the passage of time and has revolutionized the entire ICT industry. Cloud computing is categorized into two forms Service oriented computing and Grid Computing. Service oriented Computing is an transpiring paradigm that has revamped the consumption of software and related product all around the globe. The core functionalities that service oriented computing provide is elements and that are independent of platforms and are programmed using standard protocols to support distributed computing across various organizations. [2]

The world has recently adopted a new approach to computing – cloud computing. It is a particularly new model of computing, where databases are stored and operated somewhere in a cloud. Mell and Grance (2011) define cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” (p. 2). In other words, the cloud is considered a remote computing data center that one can access either on the subscription or “pay-as-you-go” basis. Thus, cloud computing relates to the hardware, applications, and system software that provide

Several years after the emergence of cloud computing, most of people still confuse with its concept because different research institutes defined the term differently. With the development of cloud computing, its concept evolves gradually in years. According to the Wikipedia, the most recent definition of cloud computing is “the delivery of services of the computing a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network (typically the Internet).” Cloud computing, in one word, was termed as the many different types of virtualized applications and services that are moved into the “cloud” – a metaphor for the internet. Cloud computing providers maintain and control physical servers, and data is processed in the “cloud” provider’s environment which also delivers hosted services. For the user, the entire computing infrastructures virtually reside “in the cloud.” In many cases, devices that used to access these services and

In the ever-changing world of business communication, the demand for instantaneous information has given rise to a new market, focused exclusively on the creation and advancement of dynamic network systems that bring millions of individuals and businesses together through an interconnected system of servers known as “the cloud”. As defined by IBM, cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing resources over the internet on a pay-for-use basis. This concept allows companies to harness incredible amounts of processing power, power that was inconceivable a mere decade ago. As more and more companies have adopted and integrated these systems of cloud computing into their business

The boom in the cloud computing world has led to a new era of on demand delivery of hosted service over a shared network. Cloud computing is a complex infrastructure of software, hardware and storage that is available as a service. It has flexibility rendering user to customize the service suited to his needs. Innovations in virtualization and distributed systems have paved the path for interest in cloud computing.

Cloud computing has drawn attentions from academia, industries, tech-savvy individuals and analytic firms. This positive attitude towards cloud computing resulted in numerous definitions.