Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing


Cloud computing is a general term used for computing that involves delivering hosted services over the internet. The name cloud derived from cloud symbol that we use in flowcharts to represent Internet.

Cloud Computing provides three types of services are: -

1. SaaS (Software as a Service) - Here the service providers host applications like spreadsheets, Documents etc. over a network i.e. Internet and are available to their customers at any time.

2. PaaS (Platform as a Service) – The service provider rents the platform/software such as operating system, virtualized servers, Hardware to their customers and Paas allows customers to upgrade their platforms according to their wish.

3. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service or Hardware as a service) - An organization or service provider outsources Hardware, networking devices, servers, storage etc. to their client or customer and charged as pay per minute or hour for using their services. ex. Amazon web services.

Advantages of Cloud Computing:

1. Reduces overall cost and increase efficiencies, especially when replacing an organization’s locally operated on-premise servers.

2. Cloud computing has the potential to reduce a company’s energy use and carbon emissions by at least 30 per cent per user compared to an average on-premise installation of those applications.

3. Multi-Tenancy: service providers are able to serve millions of users at thousands of companies simultaneously on one massive shared infrastructure.

4. Ease of operations: A marketing manager or sales manager can update their database from anywhere, immediately keep their database up to date.

5. Data Centre Efficiency: the way facilities are physically constructed, equipped with IT and supporting infrastructure, and managed has a major impact on the energy use for a given amount of computing power.

Disadvantages:

The biggest challenge for cloud computing is security as every operation is carried out online there may be high risk of malicious programs, hackers, phishing attacks etc. Confidentiality of data is not assured as it is maintained by third party service provider.