Introduction to Cloud Computing
1) What is Cloud?
2) What is Cloud Computing?
3) Types of Cloud / Deployment Models
4) Benefits Cloud Computing
5) Risks related to Cloud Computing
1) What is Cloud?
> The term Cloud refers to a Network or Internet. In other words, we can say that Cloud is something, which is present at remote location. Cloud can provide services over public and private networks, i.e., WAN, LAN or VPN.
> Applications such as e-mail, web conferencing, customer relationship management (CRM) execute on cloud.
2) What is Cloud Computing?
> Cloud Computing refers to configuring, manipulating, and accessing the hardware and software resources remotely. It offers online data storage, infrastructure, and application.
> Cloud computing offers platform independency, as the software is not required to be installed locally on the PC.
3) Types of Cloud / Deployment Models
> Deployment models define the type of access to the cloud, i.e., how the cloud is located? Cloud can have any of the four types of access: Public, Private, Hybrid, and Community.
i) Public Cloud
> The public cloud allows systems and services to be easily accessible to the general public. Public cloud may be less secure because of its openness.
Examples of public clouds include:
a) Gmail, Blogger etc…from Google,
b) Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),
c) IBM’s Blue Cloud
ii) Private Cloud
> The private cloud allows systems and services to be accessible within an organization. It is more secured because of its private nature.
Ex: Enterprise Gmail Email
iii) Community Cloud
> The community cloud allows systems and services to be accessible by a group of organizations.
Ex: Java developers, Oracle developers etc…
iv) Hybrid
> The hybrid cloud is a mixture of public and private cloud, in which the critical activities are performed using private cloud while the non-critical activities are performed using public cloud.
Ex: Del Website
4) Benefits Cloud Computing
> One can access applications as utilities, over the Internet.
> One can configure and manipulate the applications online at any time.
> It does not require to install a software to access or manipulate cloud application.
5) Risks related to Cloud Computing
> Security and Privacy
It is the biggest concern about cloud computing. Since data management and infrastructure management in cloud is provided by third-party, it is always a risk to handover the sensitive information to cloud service providers.
> Lock In
It is very difficult for the customers to switch from one Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to another. It results in dependency on a particular CSP for service.
