What is Cloud Computing

Version 0.1 ● 18th May 2014

© 2014 Faisal Khan - www.FaysalKhan.org

licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3 or later
VERSION: 0.1 REVISION DATE: 18th May 2014
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Table Of Contents
Overview.................................................................................................................................. 1

Advantages............................................................................................................................... 2

Hosted (Host) services............................................................................................................. 3

History...................................................................................................................................... 4
The 1950s....................................................................................................................... 4
The 1960s–1990s........................................................................................................... 4
The 1990s....................................................................................................................... 4
Since 2000...................................................................................................................... 5
Growth and popularity..................................................................................................... 5
Financials........................................................................................................................ 6
Origin of the term............................................................................................................ 6

Similar systems and concepts.................................................................................................. 7

Characteristics.......................................................................................................................... 9

Service models....................................................................................................................... 11
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)..................................................................................11
Platform as a service (PaaS)........................................................................................ 11
Software as a service (SaaS).......................................................................................12

Cloud management................................................................................................................ 13
Cloud management challenges....................................................................................13

Cloud clients........................................................................................................................... 14

Deployment models................................................................................................................ 15
Private cloud................................................................................................................. 15
Public cloud.................................................................................................................. 15
Community cloud.......................................................................................................... 15
Hybrid cloud.................................................................................................................. 15
Distributed cloud........................................................................................................... 16

Cloud management................................................................................................................ 17
Aspects of cloud management systems........................................................................17

Architecture............................................................................................................................ 19
The Intercloud............................................................................................................... 19
Cloud engineering......................................................................................................... 19

Issues..................................................................................................................................... 20
Threats and opportunities of the cloud..........................................................................20
Privacy.......................................................................................................................... 20
Privacy solutions........................................................................................................... 21

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Compliance................................................................................................................... 21
Legal............................................................................................................................. 22
Vendor lock-in............................................................................................................... 23
Open source................................................................................................................. 23
Open standards............................................................................................................ 24
Security......................................................................................................................... 24
Sustainability................................................................................................................. 25
Abuse............................................................................................................................ 25
IT governance............................................................................................................... 26
Consumer end storage.................................................................................................26
Ambiguity of terminology............................................................................................... 26
Performance interference and noisy neighbors............................................................26
Monopolies and privatization of cyberspace.................................................................27

The Future.............................................................................................................................. 28

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Overview
Cloud computing involves distributed computing over a network, where a program or application
may run on many connected computers at the same time. It specifically refers to a computing
hardware machine or group of computing hardware machines commonly referred as a server
connected through a communication network such as the Internet, an intranet, a local area
network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Any individual user who has permission to access
the server can use the server's processing power to run an application, store data, or perform any
other computing task. Therefore, instead of using a personal computer every-time to run the
application, the individual can now run the application from anywhere in the world, as the server
provides the processing power to the application and the server is also connected to a network
via internet or other connection platforms to be accessed from anywhere. All this has become
possible due to increasing computer processing power available to humankind with decrease in
cost as stated in Moore's law.

In common usage the term "the cloud" is essentially a metaphor for the Internet. Marketers have
further popularized the phrase "in the cloud" to refer to software, platforms and infrastructure that
are sold "as a service", i.e. remotely through the Internet. Typically, the seller has actual energy-
consuming servers which host products and services from a remote location, so end-users don't
have to; they can simply log on to the network without installing anything. The major models of
cloud computing service are known as software as a service, platform as a service, and
infrastructure as a service. These cloud services may be offered in a public, private or hybrid
network. Google, Amazon, IBM, Oracle Cloud, Rackspace, Salesforce, Zoho and Microsoft Azure
are some well-known cloud vendors.

Network-based services, which appear to be provided by real server hardware and are in fact
served up by virtual hardware simulated by software running on one or more real machines, are
often called cloud computing. Such virtual servers do not physically exist and can therefore be
moved around and scaled up or down on the fly without affecting the end user, somewhat like a
cloud becoming larger or smaller without being a physical object.

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Advantages
Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale,
similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing is
the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

The cloud also focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud
resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per
demand. This can work for allocating resources to users. For example, a cloud computer facility
that serves European users during European business hours with a specific application (e.g.,
email) may reallocate the same resources to serve North American users during North America's
business hours with a different application (e.g., a web server). This approach should maximize
the use of computing power thus reducing environmental damage as well since less power, air
conditioning, rackspace, etc. are required for a variety of functions. With cloud computing,
multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing
licenses for different applications.

The term "moving to cloud" also refers to an organization moving away from a traditional CAPEX
model (buy the dedicated hardware and depreciate it over a period of time) to the OPEX model
(use a shared cloud infrastructure and pay as one uses it).

Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs,
and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of infrastructure. Proponents also
claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with
improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources
to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud providers typically use a "pay as
you go" model. This can lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the
cloud pricing model.

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Hosted (Host) services

The term "cloud computing" is mostly used to sell hosted services in the sense of application
service provisioning that run client server software at a remote location. Such services are given
popular acronyms like 'SaaS' (Software as a Service), 'PaaS' (Platform as a Service), 'IaaS'
(Infrastructure as a Service), 'HaaS' (Hardware as a Service) and finally 'EaaS' (Everything as a
Service). End users access cloud-based applications through a web browser, thin client or mobile
app while the business software and user's data are stored on servers at a remote location.
Examples include Amazon Web Services and Google App engine, which allocate space for a
user to deploy and manage software "in the cloud".

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History
The 1950s

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1950s, when large-scale mainframe
computers became available in academia and corporations, accessible via thin clients/terminal
computers, often referred to as "static terminals", because they were used for communications
but had no internal processing capacities. To make more efficient use of costly mainframes, a
practice evolved that allowed multiple users to share both the physical access to the computer
from multiple terminals as well as the CPU time. This eliminated periods of inactivity on the
mainframe and allowed for a greater return on the investment. The practice of sharing CPU time
on a mainframe became known in the industry as time-sharing. During mid 70s it was popularly
known as RJE Remote Job Entry process mostly associated with IBM and DEC.

The 1960s–1990s

John McCarthy opined in the 1960s that "computation may someday be organized as a public
utility." Almost all of the modern-day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision,
provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the electricity industry
and the use of public, private, government, and community forms, were thoroughly explored in
Douglas Parkhill's 1966 book, The Challenge of the Computer Utility. Other scholars have shown
that cloud computing's roots go all the way back to the 1950s when scientist Herb Grosch (the
author of Grosch's law) postulated that the entire world would operate on dumb terminals
powered by about 15 large data centers. Due to the expense of these powerful computers, many
corporations and other entities could avail themselves of computing capability through time-
sharing and several organizations, such as GE's GEISCO, IBM subsidiary The Service Bureau
Corporation (SBC, founded in 1957), Tymshare (founded in 1966), National CSS (founded in
1967 and bought by Dun & Bradstreet in 1979), Dial Data (bought by Tymshare in 1968), and
Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) marketed time-sharing as a commercial venture.

The 1990s

In the 1990s, telecommunications companies, who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-
point data circuits, began offering virtual private network (VPN) services with comparable quality
of service, but at a lower cost. By switching traffic as they saw fit to balance server use, they
could use overall network bandwidth more effectively. They began to use the cloud symbol to
denote the demarcation point between what the provider was responsible for and what users
were responsible for. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the
network infrastructure.

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As computers became more prevalent, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-
scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing, experimenting with
algorithms to provide the optimal use of the infrastructure, platform and applications which
prioritized the CPU and efficiency for the end users.

Since 2000

After the dot-com bubble, Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by
modernizing their data centers, which, like most computer networks, were using as little as 10%
of their capacity at any one time, just to leave room for occasional spikes. Having found that the
new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements whereby small,
fast-moving "two-pizza teams" (teams small enough to feed with two pizzas) could add new
features faster and more easily, Amazon initiated a new product development effort to provide
cloud computing to external customers, and launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) on a utility
computing basis in 2006.

In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for
deploying private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European
Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and
hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on
providing quality of service guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-
based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project,
resulting in a real-time cloud environment. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud
computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services
and those who sell them" and observed that "organizations are switching from company-owned
hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to
computing ... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions
in other areas."

On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet.
Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a
critical piece.

On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud. While aspects of the Oracle Cloud are still
in development, this cloud offering is posed to be the first to provide users with access to an
integrated set of IT solutions, including the Applications (SaaS), Platform (PaaS), and
Infrastructure (IaaS) layers.

Growth and popularity

The development of the Internet from being document centric via semantic data towards more
and more services was described as "dynamic web". This contribution focused in particular in the
need for better meta-data able to describe not only implementation details but also conceptual
details of model-based applications.

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The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as
well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and
autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing.

Financials

Cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per annum.

Origin of the term

The origin of the term cloud computing is unclear, although it is often attributed to the Internet
Systems Division of Compaq Computer (George Favaloro, Philip Reagan, Jeff Whatcott, Ken
Evans, Ricardo Cidale, and others). The expression cloud is commonly used in science to
describe a large agglomeration of objects that visually appear from a distance as a cloud and
describes any set of things whose details are not inspected further in a given context.

Meteorology: a weather cloud is an agglomeration.

Mathematics: a large number of points in a coordinate system in mathematics is seen as a point

cloud;

Astronomy: a cloud of gas and particulate matter in space is known as a nebula (Latin for mist or
cloud),

Physics: The indeterminate position of electrons around an atomic kernel appears like a cloud to
a distant observer

In analogy to above usage the word cloud was used as a metaphor for the Internet and a
standardized cloud-like shape was used to denote a network on telephony schematics and later
to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams. The cloud symbol was used to represent the
Internet as early as 1994, in which servers were then shown connected to, but external to, the
cloud.

References to cloud computing in its modern sense can be found as early as 1996, with the
earliest known mention to be found in a Compaq internal document.

The term became popular after Amazon.com introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006.

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Similar systems and concepts

Cloud Computing is the result of evolution and adoption of existing technologies and paradigms.
The goal of cloud computing is to allow users to take benefit from all of these technologies,
without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them. The cloud aims to
cut costs, and help the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT
obstacles.

The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization generalizes the
physical infrastructure, which is the most rigid component, and makes it available as a soft
component that is easy to use and manage. By doing so, virtualization provides the agility
required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. On
the other hand, autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can
provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the
process and reduces the possibility of human errors.

Users routinely face difficult business problems. Cloud computing adopts concepts from Service-
oriented Architecture (SOA) that can help the user break these problems into services that can be
integrated to provide a solution. Cloud computing provides all of its resources as services, and
makes use of the well-established standards and best practices gained in the domain of SOA to
allow global and easy access to cloud services in a standardized way.

Cloud computing also leverages concepts from utility computing in order to provide metrics for the
services used. Such metrics are at the core of the public cloud pay-per-use models. In addition,
measured services are an essential part of the feedback loop in autonomic computing, allowing
services to scale on-demand and to perform automatic failure recovery.

Cloud computing is a kind of grid computing; it has evolved by addressing the QoS (quality of
service) and reliability problems. Cloud computing provides the tools and technologies to build
data/compute intensive parallel applications with much more affordable prices compared to
traditional parallel computing techniques.

Cloud computing shares characteristics with:

Client–server model — Client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that
distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requestors (clients).

Grid computing — "A form of distributed and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual
computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to
perform very large tasks."

Mainframe computer — Powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical
applications, typically bulk data processing such as: census; industry and consumer statistics;

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police and secret intelligence services; enterprise resource planning; and financial transaction
processing.

Utility computing — The "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage,
as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity."

Peer-to-peer — A distributed architecture without the need for central coordination. Participants
are both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model).

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Characteristics
Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics:

Agility improves with users' ability to re-provision technological infrastructure resources.

Application programming interface (API) accessibility to software that enables machines to

interact with cloud software in the same way that a traditional user interface (e.g., a computer
desktop) facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Cloud computing systems
typically use Representational State Transfer (REST)-based APIs.

Cost: cloud providers claim that computing costs reduce. A public-cloud delivery model converts
capital expenditure to operational expenditure. This purportedly lowers barriers to entry, as
infrastructure is typically provided by a third party and does not need to be purchased for one-
time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained,
with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house). The e-
FISCAL project's state-of-the-art repository contains several articles looking into cost aspects in
more detail, most of them concluding that costs savings depend on the type of activities
supported and the type of infrastructure available in-house.

Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser
regardless of their location or what device they use (e.g., PC, mobile phone). As infrastructure is
off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from
anywhere.

Virtualization technology allows sharing of servers and storage devices and increased utilization.
Applications can be easily migrated from one physical server to another.

Multitenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing
for:

centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)

peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)

utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilized.

Reliability improves with the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes well-designed cloud
computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Scalability and elasticity via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained,

self-service basis in near real-time(Note, the VM startup time varies by VM type, location, os and
cloud providers), without users having to engineer for peak loads.

Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed
using web services as the system interface.

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Security can improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but
concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for
stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than other traditional systems, in part
because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers
cannot afford to tackle. However, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is
distributed over a wider area or over a greater number of devices, as well as in multi-tenant
systems shared by unrelated users. In addition, user access to security audit logs may be difficult
or impossible. Private cloud installations are in part motivated by users' desire to retain control
over the infrastructure and avoid losing control of information security.

Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed
on each user's computer and can be accessed from different places.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's definition of cloud computing identifies "five
essential characteristics":

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as

server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction
with each service provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through
standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g.,
mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).

Resource pooling. The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers
using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and
reassigned according to consumer demand.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases
automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the
consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear unlimited and can be
appropriated in any quantity at any time.

Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging
a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage,
processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled,
and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

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Service models
Cloud computing providers offer their services according to several fundamental models:
infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS)
where IaaS is the most basic and each higher model abstracts from the details of the lower
models. Other key components in anything as a service (XaaS) are described in a
comprehensive taxonomy model published in 2009, such as Strategy-as-a-Service,
Collaboration-as-a-Service, Business Process-as-a-Service, Database-as-a-Service, etc. In 2012,
network as a service (NaaS) and communication as a service (CaaS) were officially included by
ITU (International Telecommunication Union) as part of the basic cloud computing models,
recognized service categories of a telecommunication-centric cloud ecosystem.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

In the most basic cloud-service model, providers of IaaS offer computers – physical or (more
often) virtual machines – and other resources. (A hypervisor, such as OpenStack, Xen, KVM,
VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within
the cloud operational support-system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the
ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.) IaaS clouds
often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk image library, raw (block) and file-
based storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and
software bundles. IaaS-cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools
installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or
carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). Recently, this paradigm has been extended
towards sensing and actuation resources, aiming at providing virtual sensors and actuators as a
services SAaaS.

To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application
software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the
operating systems and the application software. Cloud providers typically bill IaaS services on a
utility computing basis cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.

Cloud communications and cloud telephony, rather than replacing local computing infrastructure,
replace local telecommunications infrastructure with Voice over IP and other off-site Internet
services.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

In the PaaS models, cloud providers deliver a computing platform, typically including operating
system, programming language execution environment, database, and web server. Application
developers can develop and run their software solutions on a cloud platform without the cost and
complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. With some
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PaaS offers like Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine, the underlying computer and storage
resources scale automatically to match application demand so that the cloud user does not have
to allocate resources manually. The latter has also been proposed by an architecture aiming to
facilitate real-time in cloud environments.

Software as a service (SaaS)

In the business model using software as a service (SaaS), users are provided access to
application software and databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms that
run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software" and is usually
priced on a pay-per-use basis. SaaS providers generally price applications using a subscription
fee.

In the SaaS model, cloud providers install and operate application software in the cloud and cloud
users access the software from cloud clients. Cloud users do not manage the cloud infrastructure
and platform where the application runs. This eliminates the need to install and run the
application on the cloud user's own computers, which simplifies maintenance and support. Cloud
applications are different from other applications in their scalability—which can be achieved by
cloning tasks onto multiple virtual machines at run-time to meet changing work demand. Load
balancers distribute the work over the set of virtual machines. This process is transparent to the
cloud user, who sees only a single access point. To accommodate a large number of cloud users,
cloud applications can be multitenant, that is, any machine serves more than one cloud user
organization. It is common to refer to special types of cloud-based application software with a
similar naming convention: desktop as a service, business process as a service, test environment
as a service, communication as a service.

The pricing model for SaaS applications is typically a monthly or yearly flat fee per user, so price
is scalable and adjustable if users are added or removed at any point.

Proponents claim SaaS allows a business the potential to reduce IT operational costs by
outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the cloud provider. This enables
the business to reallocate IT operations costs away from hardware/software spending and
personnel expenses, towards meeting other goals. In addition, with applications hosted centrally,
updates can be released without the need for users to install new software. One drawback of
SaaS is that the users' data are stored on the cloud provider's server. As a result, there could be
unauthorized access to the data. For this reason, users are increasingly adopting intelligent third-
party key management systems to help secure their data.

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Cloud management
Legacy management infrastructures, which are based on the concept of dedicated system
relationships and architecture constructs, are not well suited to cloud environments where
instances are continually launched and decommissioned. Instead, the dynamic nature of cloud
computing requires monitoring and management tools that are adaptable, extensible and
customizable.

Cloud management challenges

Cloud computing presents a number of management challenges. Companies using public clouds
do not have ownership of the equipment hosting the cloud environment, and because the
environment is not contained within their own networks, public cloud customers do not have full
visibility or control. Users of public cloud services must also integrate with an architecture defined
by the cloud provider, using its specific parameters for working with cloud components.
Integration includes tying into the cloud APIs for configuring IP addresses, subnets, firewalls and
data service functions for storage. Because control of these functions is based on the cloud
provider’s infrastructure and services, public cloud users must integrate with the cloud
infrastructure management.

Capacity management is a challenge for both public and private cloud environments because end
users have the ability to deploy applications using self-service portals. Applications of all sizes
may appear in the environment, consume an unpredictable amount of resources, then disappear
at any time.

Chargeback—or, pricing resource use on a granular basis—is a challenge for both public and
private cloud environments. Chargeback is a challenge for public cloud service providers because
they must price their services competitively while still creating profit. Users of public cloud
services may find chargeback challenging because it is difficult for IT groups to assess actual
resource costs on a granular basis due to overlapping resources within an organization that may
be paid for by an individual business unit, such as electrical power. For private cloud operators,
chargeback is fairly straightforward, but the challenge lies in guessing how to allocate resources
as closely as possible to actual resource usage to achieve the greatest operational efficiency.
Exceeding budgets can be a risk.

Hybrid cloud environments, which combine public and private cloud services, sometimes with
traditional infrastructure elements, present their own set of management challenges. These
include security concerns if sensitive data lands on public cloud servers, budget concerns around
overuse of storage or bandwidth and proliferation of mismanaged images. Managing the
information flow in a hybrid cloud environment is also a significant challenge. On-premises clouds
must share information with applications hosted off-premises by public cloud providers, and this
information may change constantly. Hybrid cloud environments also typically include a complex
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mix of policies, permissions and limits that must be managed consistently across both public and
private clouds.

Cloud clients
Users access cloud computing using networked client devices, such as desktop computers,
laptops, tablets and smartphones. Some of these devices – cloud clients – rely on cloud
computing for all or a majority of their applications so as to be essentially useless without it.
Examples are thin clients and the browser-based Chromebook. Many cloud applications do not
require specific software on the client and instead use a web browser to interact with the cloud
application. With Ajax and HTML5 these Web user interfaces can achieve a similar, or even
better, look and feel to native applications. Some cloud applications, however, support specific
client software dedicated to these applications (e.g., virtual desktop clients and most email
clients). Some legacy applications (line of business applications that until now have been
prevalent in thin client computing) are delivered via a screen-sharing technology.

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Deployment models
Private cloud

Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed
internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. Undertaking a private cloud
project requires a significant level and degree of engagement to virtualize the business
environment, and requires the organization to reevaluate decisions about existing resources.
When done right, it can improve business, but every step in the project raises security issues that
must be addressed to prevent serious vulnerabilities. Self-run data centers are generally capital
intensive. They have a significant physical footprint, requiring allocations of space, hardware, and
environmental controls. These assets have to be refreshed periodically, resulting in additional
capital expenditures. They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and
manage them" and thus do not benefit from less hands-on management, essentially " the
economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".

Public cloud

A cloud is called a "public cloud" when the services are rendered over a network that is open for
public use. Technically there may be little or no difference between public and private cloud
architecture, however, security consideration may be substantially different for services
(applications, storage, and other resources) that are made available by a service provider for a
public audience and when communication is effected over a non-trusted network. Generally,
public cloud service providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft and Google own and operate the
infrastructure and offer access only via Internet (direct connectivity is not offered).

Community cloud

Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community
with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by
a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a
public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so only some of the cost savings potential of cloud
computing are realized.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain
distinct entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models.
Hybrid cloud can also mean the ability to connect collocation, managed and/or dedicated services
with cloud resources.

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Gartner, Inc. defines a hybrid cloud service as a cloud computing service that is composed of
some combination of private, public and community cloud services, from different service
providers. A hybrid cloud service crosses isolation and provider boundaries so that it can’t be
simply put in one category of private, public, or community cloud service. It allows one to extend
either the capacity or the capability of a cloud service, by aggregation, integration or
customization with another cloud service.

Varied use cases for hybrid cloud composition exist. For example, an organization may store
sensitive client data in house on a private cloud application, but interconnect that application to a
billing application provided on a public cloud as a software service. This example of hybrid cloud
extends the capabilities of the enterprise to deliver a specific business service through the
addition of externally available public cloud services.

Another example of hybrid cloud is one where IT organizations use public cloud computing
resources to meet temporary capacity needs that can not be met by the private cloud. This
capability enables hybrid clouds to employ cloud bursting for scaling across clouds.

Cloud bursting is an application deployment model in which an application runs in a private cloud
or data center and "bursts" to a public cloud when the demand for computing capacity increases.
A primary advantage of cloud bursting and a hybrid cloud model is that an organization only pays
for extra compute resources when they are needed.

Cloud bursting enables data centers to create an in-house IT infrastructure that supports average
workloads, and use cloud resources from public or private clouds, during spikes in processing
demands.

By utilizing "hybrid cloud" architecture, companies and individuals are able to obtain degrees of
fault tolerance combined with locally immediate usability without dependency on internet
connectivity. Hybrid cloud architecture requires both on-premises resources and off-site (remote)
server-based cloud infrastructure.

Distributed cloud

Cloud computing can also be provided by a distributed set of machines that are running at
different locations, while still connected to a single network or hub service. Examples of this
include distributed computing platforms such as BOINC and Folding@Home. An interesting
attempt in such direction is Cloud@Home, aiming at implementing cloud computing provisioning
model on top of voluntarily shared resources

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Cloud management
Public clouds are managed by public cloud service providers, which include the public cloud
environment’s servers, storage, networking and data center operations. Users of public cloud
services can generally select from three basic categories:

User self-provisioning: Customers purchase cloud services directly from the provider, typically
through a web form or console interface. The customer pays on a per-transaction basis.

Advance provisioning: Customers contract in advance a predetermined amount of resources,

which are prepared in advance of service. The customer pays a flat fee or a monthly fee.

Dynamic provisioning: The provider allocates resources when the customer needs them, then
decommissions them when they are no longer needed. The customer is charged on a pay-per-
use basis.

Managing a private cloud requires software tools to help create a virtualized pool of compute
resources, provide a self-service portal for end users and handle security, resource allocation,
tracking and billing. Management tools for private clouds tend to be service driven, as opposed to
resource driven, because cloud environments are typically highly virtualized and organized in
terms of portable workloads.

In hybrid cloud environments, compute, network and storage resources must be managed across
multiple domains, so a good management strategy should start by defining what needs to be
managed, and where and how to do it. Policies to help govern these domains should include
configuration and installation of images, access control, and budgeting and reporting. Access
control often includes the use of Single sign-on (SSO), in which a user logs in once and gains
access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them.

Aspects of cloud management systems

A cloud management system is a combination of software and technologies designed to manage

cloud environments. The industry has responded to the management challenges of cloud
computing with cloud management systems. HP, Novell, Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and Citrix are
among the vendors that have management systems specifically for managing cloud
environments.

At a minimum, a cloud management solution should be able to manage a pool of heterogeneous

compute resources, provide access to end users, monitor security, manage resource allocation
and manage tracking. For composite applications, cloud management solutions also encompass
frameworks for workflow mapping and management.

Enterprises with large-scale cloud implementations may require more robust cloud management
tools that include specific characteristics, such as the ability to manage multiple platforms from a

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single point of reference, include intelligent analytics to automate processes like application
lifecycle management. And high-end cloud management tools should also be able to handle
system failures automatically with capabilities such as self-monitoring, an explicit notification
mechanism, and include failover and self-healing capabilities. Cisco recently launched its
InterCloud solution to provide flexibility to dynamically manage workloads across public and
private cloud environments.

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Architecture
Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of
cloud computing, typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other
over a loose coupling mechanism such as a messaging queue. Elastic provision implies
intelligence in the use of tight or loose coupling as applied to mechanisms such as these and
others.

The Intercloud

The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet
"network of networks" on which it is based.

Cloud engineering

Cloud engineering is the application of engineering disciplines to cloud computing. It brings a

systematic approach to the high-level concerns of commercialization, standardization, and
governance in conceiving, developing, operating and maintaining cloud computing systems. It is a
multidisciplinary method encompassing contributions from diverse areas such as systems,
software, web, performance, information, security, platform, risk, and quality engineering.

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Issues
Threats and opportunities of the cloud

Critical voices including GNU project initiator Richard Stallman and Oracle founder Larry Ellison
warned that the whole concept is rife with privacy and ownership concerns and constitute merely
a fad.

However, cloud computing continues to gain steam with 56% of the major European technology
decision-makers estimate that the cloud is a priority in 2013 and 2014, and the cloud budget may
reach 30% of the overall IT budget.

According to the TechInsights Report 2013: Cloud Succeeds based on a survey, the cloud
implementations generally meets or exceedes expectations across major service models, such as
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service
(SaaS).

Several deterrents to the widespread adoption of cloud computing remain. Among them, are:
reliability, availability of services and data, security, complexity, costs, regulations and legal
issues, performance, migration, reversion, the lack of standards, limited customization and issues
of privacy. The cloud offers many strong points: infrastructure flexibility, faster deployment of
applications and data, cost control, adaptation of cloud resources to real needs, improved
productivity, etc. The early 2010s cloud market is dominated by software and services in SaaS
mode and IaaS (infrastructure), especially the private cloud. PaaS and the public cloud are further
back.

Privacy

The increased use of cloud computing services such as Gmail and Google Docs has pressed the
issue of privacy concerns of cloud computing services to the utmost importance. The provider of
such services lie in a position such that with the greater use of cloud computing services has
given access to a plethora of data. This access has the immense risk of data being disclosed
either accidentally or deliberately. Privacy advocates have criticized the cloud model for giving
hosting companies' greater ease to control—and thus, to monitor at will—communication between
host company and end user, and access user data (with or without permission). Instances such
as the secret NSA program, working with AT&T, and Verizon, which recorded over 10 million
telephone calls between American citizens, causes uncertainty among privacy advocates, and
the greater powers it gives to telecommunication companies to monitor user activity. A cloud
service provider (CSP) can complicate data privacy because of the extent of virtualization (virtual
machines) and cloud storage used to implement cloud service. CSP operations, customer or
tenant data may not remain on the same system, or in the same data center or even within the
same provider's cloud; this can lead to legal concerns over jurisdiction. While there have been

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efforts (such as US-EU Safe Harbor) to "harmonise" the legal environment, providers such as
Amazon still cater to major markets (typically to the United States and the European Union) by
deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select "regions and availability zones".
Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider can access the data that
is on the cloud at any time. It could accidentally or deliberately alter or even delete information.
This becomes a major concern as these service providers, who employ administrators which can
leave room for potential unwanted disclosure of information on the cloud.

Privacy solutions

Solutions to privacy in cloud computing include policy and legislation as well as end users'
choices for how data is stored. The cloud service provider needs to establish clear and relevant
policies that describe how the data of each cloud user will be accessed and used. Cloud service
users can encrypt data that is processed or stored within the cloud to prevent unauthorized
access.

Compliance

To comply with regulations including FISMA, HIPAA, and SOX in the United States, the Data
Protection Directive in the EU and the credit card industry's PCI DSS, users may have to adopt
community or hybrid deployment modes that are typically more expensive and may offer
restricted benefits. This is how Google is able to "manage and meet additional government policy
requirements beyond FISMA" and Rackspace Cloud or QubeSpace are able to claim PCI
compliance.

Many providers also obtain a SAS 70 Type II audit, but this has been criticised on the grounds
that the hand-picked set of goals and standards determined by the auditor and the auditee are
often not disclosed and can vary widely. Providers typically make this information available on
request, under non-disclosure agreement.

Customers in the EU contracting with cloud providers outside the EU/EEA have to adhere to the
EU regulations on export of personal data.

U.S. Federal Agencies have been directed by the Office of Management and Budget to use a
process called FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) to assess and
authorize cloud products and services. Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel issued a memorandum to
federal agency Chief Information Officers on December 8, 2011 defining how federal agencies
should use FedRAMP. FedRAMP consists of a subset of NIST Special Publication 800-53
security controls specifically selected to provide protection in cloud environments. A subset has
been defined for the FIPS 199 low categorization and the FIPS 199 moderate categorization. The
FedRAMP program has also established a Joint Accreditation Board (JAB) consisting of Chief
Information Officers from DoD, DHS and GSA. The JAB is responsible for establishing
accreditation standards for 3rd party organizations who perform the assessments of cloud
solutions. The JAB also reviews authorization packages, and may grant provisional authorization

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(to operate). The federal agency consuming the service still has final responsibility for final
authority to operate.

A multitude of laws and regulations have forced specific compliance requirements onto many
companies that collect, generate or store data. These policies may dictate a wide array of data
storage policies, such as how long information must be retained, the process used for deleting
data, and even certain recovery plans. Below are some examples of compliance laws or
regulations.

United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires a
contingency plan that includes, data backups, data recovery, and data access during
emergencies.

The privacy laws of Switzerland demand that private data, including emails, be physically stored
in Switzerland.

In the United Kingdom, the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 sets forth guidance for a business
contingency plan that includes policies for data storage.

In a virtualized cloud computing environment, customers may never know exactly where their
data is stored. In fact, data may be stored across multiple data centers in an effort to improve
reliability, increase performance, and provide redundancies. This geographic dispersion may
make it more difficult to ascertain legal jurisdiction if disputes arise.

Legal

As with other changes in the landscape of computing, certain legal issues arise with cloud
computing, including trademark infringement, security concerns and sharing of proprietary data
resources.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized the United States government during the
Megaupload seizure process for considering that people lose property rights by storing data on a
cloud computing service.

One important but not often mentioned problem with cloud computing is the problem of who is in
"possession" of the data. If a cloud company is the possessor of the data, the possessor has
certain legal rights. If the cloud company is the "custodian" of the data, then a different set of
rights would apply. The next problem in the legalities of cloud computing is the problem of legal
ownership of the data. Many Terms of Service agreements are silent on the question of
ownership.

These legal issues are not confined to the time period in which the cloud-based application is
actively being used. There must also be consideration for what happens when the provider-
customer relationship ends. In most cases, this event will be addressed before an application is
deployed to the cloud. However, in the case of provider insolvencies or bankruptcy the state of
the data may become blurred.

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Vendor lock-in

Because cloud computing is still relatively new, standards are still being developed. Many cloud
platforms and services are proprietary, meaning that they are built on the specific standards, tools
and protocols developed by a particular vendor for its particular cloud offering. This can make
migrating off a proprietary cloud platform prohibitively complicated and expensive.

Three types of vendor lock-in can occur with cloud computing:

Platform lock-in: cloud services tend to be built on one of several possible virtualization platforms,
for example VMWare or Xen. Migrating from a cloud provider using one platform to a cloud
provider using a different platform could be very complicated.

Data lock-in: since the cloud is still new, standards of ownership, i.e. who actually owns the data
once it lives on a cloud platform, are not yet developed, which could make it complicated if cloud
computing users ever decide to move data off of a cloud vendor's platform.

Tools lock-in: if tools built to manage a cloud environment are not compatible with different kinds
of both virtual and physical infrastructure, those tools will only be able to manage data or apps
that live in the vendor's particular cloud environment.

Heterogeneous cloud computing is described as a type of cloud environment that prevents

vendor lock-in, and aligns with enterprise data centers that are operating hybrid cloud models.
The absence of vendor lock-in lets cloud administrators select his or her choice of hypervisors for
specific tasks, or to deploy virtualized infrastructures to other enterprises without the need to
consider the flavor of hypervisor in the other enterprise.

A heterogeneous cloud is considered one that includes on-premise private clouds, public clouds
and software-as-a-service clouds. Heterogeneous clouds can work with environments that are not
virtualized, such as traditional data centers. Heterogeneous clouds also allow for the use of piece
parts, such as hypervisors, servers, and storage, from multiple vendors.

Cloud piece parts, such as cloud storage systems, offer APIs but they are often incompatible with
each other. The result is complicated migration between backends, and makes it difficult to
integrate data spread across various locations. This has been described as a problem of vendor
lock-in. The solution to this is for clouds to adopt common standards.

Heterogeneous cloud computing differs from homogeneous clouds, which have been described
as those using consistent building blocks supplied by a single vendor. Intel General Manager of
high-density computing, Jason Waxman, is quoted as saying that a homogeneous system of
15,000 servers would cost $6 million more in capital expenditure and use 1 megawatt of power.

Open source

Open-source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations,
prominent examples being the Hadoop framework and VMware's Cloud Foundry. In November
2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of
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GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to run
over a network.

Open standards

Most cloud providers expose APIs that are typically well documented (often under a Creative
Commons license) but also unique to their implementation and thus not interoperable. Some
vendors have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open standards under
development, with a view to delivering interoperability and portability. As of November 2012, the
Open Standard with broadest industry support is probably OpenStack, founded in 2010 by NASA
and Rackspace, and now governed by the OpenStack Foundation. OpenStack supporters include
AMD, Intel, Canonical, SUSE Linux, Red Hat, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Yahoo and now VMware.

Security

As cloud computing is achieving increased popularity, concerns are being voiced about the
security issues introduced through adoption of this new model. The effectiveness and efficiency
of traditional protection mechanisms are being reconsidered as the characteristics of this
innovative deployment model can differ widely from those of traditional architectures. An
alternative perspective on the topic of cloud security is that this is but another, although quite
broad, case of "applied security" and that similar security principles that apply in shared multi-
user mainframe security models apply with cloud security.

The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue that may be delaying its
adoption. Physical control of the Private Cloud equipment is more secure than having the
equipment off site and under someone else's control. Physical control and the ability to visually
inspect data links and access ports is required in order to ensure data links are not compromised.
Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private and public
sectors' unease surrounding the external management of security-based services. It is the very
nature of cloud computing-based services, private or public, that promote external management
of provided services. This delivers great incentive to cloud computing service providers to
prioritize building and maintaining strong management of secure services. Security issues have
been categorised into sensitive data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation,
recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security, account control, and
multi-tenancy issues. Solutions to various cloud security issues vary, from cryptography,
particularly public key infrastructure (PKI), to use of multiple cloud providers, standardisation of
APIs, and improving virtual machine support and legal support.

Cloud computing offers many benefits, but is vulnerable to threats. As cloud computing uses
increase, it is likely that more criminals find new ways to exploit system vulnerabilities. Many
underlying challenges and risks in cloud computing increase the threat of data compromise. To
mitigate the threat, cloud computing stakeholders should invest heavily in risk assessment to
ensure that the system encrypts to protect data, establishes trusted foundation to secure the

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platform and infrastructure, and builds higher assurance into auditing to strengthen compliance.
Security concerns must be addressed to maintain trust in cloud computing technology.

Data breach is a big concern in cloud computing. A compromised server could significantly harm
the users as well as cloud providers. A variety of information could be stolen. These include credit
card and social security numbers, addresses, and personal messages. The U.S. now requires
cloud providers to notify customers of breaches. Once notified, customers now have to worry
about identity theft and fraud, while providers have to deal with federal investigations, lawsuits
and reputational damage. Customer lawsuits and settlements have resulted in over $1 billion in
losses to cloud providers.

Sustainability

Although cloud computing is often assumed to be a form of green computing, there is currently no
way to measure how "green" computers are.

The primary environmental problem associated with the cloud is energy use. Phil Radford of
Greenpeace said “we are concerned that this new explosion in electricity use could lock us into
old, polluting energy sources instead of the clean energy available today.” Greenpeace ranks the
energy usage of the top ten big brands in cloud computing, and successfully urged several
companies to switch to clean energy. On Thursday, December 15, 2011, Greenpeace and
Facebook announced together that Facebook would shift to use clean and renewable energy to
power its own operations. Soon thereafter, Apple agreed to make all of its data centers ‘coal free’
by the end of 2013 and doubled the amount of solar energy powering its Maiden, NC data center.
Following suit, Salesforce agreed to shift to 100% clean energy by 2020.

Citing the servers' effects on the environmental effects of cloud computing, in areas where
climate favors natural cooling and renewable electricity is readily available, the environmental
effects will be more moderate. (The same holds true for "traditional" data centers.) Thus countries
with favorable conditions, such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, are trying to attract cloud
computing data centers. Energy efficiency in cloud computing can result from energy-aware
scheduling and server consolidation. However, in the case of distributed clouds over data centers
with different sources of energy including renewable energy, the use of energy efficiency
reduction could result in a significant carbon footprint reduction.

Abuse

As with privately purchased hardware, customers can purchase the services of cloud computing
for nefarious purposes. This includes password cracking and launching attacks using the
purchased services. In 2009, a banking trojan illegally used the popular Amazon service as a
command and control channel that issued software updates and malicious instructions to PCs
that were infected by the malware.

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IT governance

The introduction of cloud computing requires an appropriate IT governance model to ensure a

secured computing environment and to comply with all relevant organizational information
technology policies. As such, organizations need a set of capabilities that are essential when
effectively implementing and managing cloud services, including demand management,
relationship management, data security management, application lifecycle management, risk and
compliance management. A danger lies with the explosion of companies joining the growth in
cloud computing by becoming providers. However, many of the infrastructural and logistical
concerns regarding the operation of cloud computing businesses are still unknown. This over-
saturation may have ramifications for the industry as a whole.

Consumer end storage

The increased use of cloud computing could lead to a reduction in demand for high storage
capacity consumer end devices, due to cheaper low storage devices that stream all content via
the cloud becoming more popular. In a Wired article, Jake Gardner explains that while
unregulated usage is beneficial for IT and tech moguls like Amazon, the anonymous nature of the
cost of consumption of cloud usage makes it difficult for business to evaluate and incorporate it
into their business plans.

Ambiguity of terminology

Outside of the information technology and software industry, the term "cloud" can be found to
reference a wide range of services, some of which fall under the category of cloud computing,
while others do not. The cloud is often used to refer to a product or service that is discovered,
accessed and paid for over the Internet, but is not necessarily a computing resource. Examples of
service that are sometimes referred to as "the cloud" include, but are not limited to, crowd
sourcing, cloud printing, crowd funding, cloud manufacturing.

Performance interference and noisy neighbors

Due to its multi-tenant nature and resource sharing, cloud computing must also deal with the
"noisy neighbor" effect. This effect in essence indicates that in a shared infrastructure, the activity
of a virtual machine on a neighboring core on the same physical host may lead to increased
performance degradation of the VMs in the same physical host, due to issues such as e.g. cache
contamination. Due to the fact that the neighboring VMs may be activated or deactivated at
arbitrary times, the result is an increased variation in the actual performance of Cloud resources.
This effect seems to be dependent on the nature of the applications that run inside the VMs but
also other factors such as scheduling parameters and the careful selection may lead to optimized
assignment in order to minimize the phenomenon. This has also led to difficulties in comparing

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various cloud providers on cost and performance using traditional benchmarks for service and
application performance, as the time period and location in which the benchmark is performed
can result in widely varied results. This observation has led in turn to research efforts to make
cloud computing applications intrinsically aware of changes in the infrastructure so that the
application can automatically adapt to avoid failure.

Monopolies and privatization of cyberspace

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek points out that, although cloud computing enhances content
accessibility, this access is "increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the
cloud which provides this access". According to him, this access, necessarily mediated through a
handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace. Žižek criticises
the argument purported by supporters of cloud computing that this phenomenon is part of the
"natural evolution" of the Internet, sustaining that the quasi-monopolies "set prices at will but also
filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial
and ideological interests."

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The Future
According to Gartner's Hype cycle, cloud computing has reached a maturity that leads it into a
productive phase. This means that most of the main issues with cloud computing have been
addressed to a degree that Clouds have become interesting for full commercial exploitation. This
however does not mean that all the problems listed above have actually been solved, only that
the according risks can be tolerated to a certain degree. Cloud computing is therefore still as
much a research topic, as it is a market offering.

In 2012 the European Commission has issued an analysis of the relevance of the open research
issues for commercial stabilisation in which various experts from industry and academia identify
in particular the following major concerns:

open interoperation across (proprietary) cloud solutions at IaaS, PaaS and SaaS levels

managing multitenancy at large scale and in heterogeneous environments

dynamic and seamless elasticity from inhouse clouds to public clouds for unusual (scale,
complexity) and/or infrequent requirements

data management in a cloud environment, taking the technical and legal constraints into
consideration

These findings have been refined into a research roadmap proposed by the Cloud Computing
Expert Group on Research in December 2012 which tries to lay out a timeline for the identified
research topics according to their commercial relevance. With the 8th Framework Programmes
for Research and Technological Development, the European Commission is trying to support the
according research work along the lines of the Europe 2020 strategy.

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