What is Cloud Computing

The term cloud refers to a network or the internet. It is a technology that uses
remote servers on the internet to store, manage, and access data online rather than
local drives. The data can be anything such as files, images, documents, audio, video,
and more.

There are the following operations that we can do using cloud computing:

o Developing new applications and services

o Storage, back up, and recovery of data
o Hosting blogs and websites
o Delivery of software on demand
o Analysis of data
o Streaming videos and audios

Why Cloud Computing?

Small as well as large IT companies, follow the traditional methods to provide the IT
infrastructure. That means for any IT company, we need a Server Room that is the
basic need of IT companies.

In that server room, there should be a database server, mail server, networking,
firewalls, routers, modem, switches, QPS (Query Per Second means how much
queries or load will be handled by the server), configurable system, high net speed,
and the maintenance engineers.

To establish such IT infrastructure, we need to spend lots of money. To overcome all

these problems and to reduce the IT infrastructure cost, Cloud Computing comes
into existence.
Characteristics of Cloud Computing
The characteristics of cloud computing are given below:

1) Agility

The cloud works in a distributed computing environment. It shares resources

among users and works very fast.

2) High availability and reliability

The availability of servers is high and more reliable because the chances of
infrastructure failure are

3) High Scalability

Cloud offers "on-demand" provisioning of resources on a large scale, without

having engineers for peak loads.

4) Multi-Sharing

With the help of cloud computing, multiple users and applications can work more
efficiently with cost reductions by sharing common infrastructure.
5) Device and Location Independence

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

6) Maintenance

Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, since they do not need to be

installed on each user's computer and can be accessed from different places. So,
it reduces the cost also.

7) Low Cost

By using cloud computing, the cost will be reduced because to take the services of
cloud computing, IT company need not to set its own infrastructure and pay-as-
per usage of resources.

8) Services in the pay-per-use mode

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are provided to the users so that they
can access services on the cloud by using these APIs and pay the charges as per
the usage of services.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

As we all know that Cloud computing is trending technology. Almost every company
switched their services on the cloud to rise the company growth.

Here, we are going to discuss some important advantages of Cloud Computing-

1) Back-up and restore data

Once the data is stored in the cloud, it is easier to get back-up and restore that data
using the cloud.

2) Improved collaboration

Cloud applications improve collaboration by allowing groups of people to quickly

and easily share information in the cloud via shared storage.

3) Excellent accessibility

Cloud allows us to quickly and easily access store information anywhere, anytime in
the whole world, using an internet connection. An internet cloud infrastructure
increases organization productivity and efficiency by ensuring that our data is always
accessible.

4) Low maintenance cost

Cloud computing reduces both hardware and software maintenance costs for
organizations.

5) Mobility

Cloud computing allows us to easily access all cloud data via mobile.
6) IServices in the pay-per-use model

Cloud computing offers Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to the users for
access services on the cloud and pays the charges as per the usage of service.

7) Unlimited storage capacity

Cloud offers us a huge amount of storing capacity for storing our important data
such as documents, images, audio, video, etc. in one place.

8) Data security

Data security is one of the biggest advantages of cloud computing. Cloud offers
many advanced features related to security and ensures that data is securely stored
and handled.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

A list of the disadvantage of cloud computing is given below -

1) Internet Connectivity

As you know, in cloud computing, every data (image, audio, video, etc.) is stored on
the cloud, and we access these data through the cloud by using the internet
connection. If you do not have good internet connectivity, you cannot access these
data. However, we have no any other way to access data from the cloud.

2) Vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in is the biggest disadvantage of cloud computing. Organizations may

face problems when transferring their services from one vendor to another. As
different vendors provide different platforms, that can cause difficulty moving from
one cloud to another.

3) Limited Control

As we know, cloud infrastructure is completely owned, managed, and monitored by

the service provider, so the cloud users have less control over the function and
execution of services within a cloud infrastructure.

4) Security

Although cloud service providers implement the best security standards to store
important information. But, before adopting cloud technology, you should be aware
that you will be sending all your organization's sensitive information to a third party,
i.e., a cloud computing service provider. While sending the data on the cloud, there
may be a chance that your organization's information is hacked by Hackers.

History of Cloud Computing

Before emerging the cloud computing, there was Client/Server computing which is
basically a centralized storage in which all the software applications, all the data and
all the controls are resided on the server side.

If a single user wants to access specific data or run a program, he/she need to
connect to the server and then gain appropriate access, and then he/she can do
his/her business.

Then after, distributed computing came into picture, where all the computers are
networked together and share their resources when needed.

On the basis of above computing, there was emerged of cloud computing concepts
that later implemented.

At around in 1961, John MacCharty suggested in a speech at MIT that computing can
be sold like a utility, just like a water or electricity. It was a brilliant idea, but like all
brilliant ideas, it was ahead if its time, as for the next few decades, despite interest in
the model, the technology simply was not ready for it.

But of course time has passed and the technology caught that idea and after few
years we mentioned that:

In 1999, Salesforce.com started delivering of applications to users using a simple

website. The applications were delivered to enterprises over the Internet, and this way
the dream of computing sold as utility were true.

In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services, providing services like storage,
computation and even human intelligence. However, only starting with the launch of
the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006 a truly commercial service open to everybody
existed.

In 2009, Google Apps also started to provide cloud computing enterprise

applications.

Of course, all the big players are present in the cloud computing evolution, some
were earlier, some were later. In 2009, Microsoft launched Windows Azure, and
companies like Oracle and HP have all joined the game. This proves that today, cloud
computing has become mainstream.

Cloud Computing Technologies

A list of cloud computing technologies are given below -

o Virtualization
o Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
o Grid Computing
o Utility Computing

Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual environment to run multiple
applications and operating systems on the same server. The virtual environment can
be anything, such as a single instance or a combination of many operating systems,
storage devices, network application servers, and other environments.

The concept of Virtualization in cloud computing increases the use of virtual

machines. A virtual machine is a software computer or software program that not
only works as a physical computer but can also function as a physical machine and
perform tasks such as running applications or programs as per the user's demand.

Types of Virtualization

A list of types of Virtualization is given below -

i. Server virtualization
ii. Storage virtualization
iii. Operating system virtualization
iv. Data Virtualization

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows organizations to access on-
demand cloud-based computing solutions according to the change of business
needs. It can work without or with cloud computing. The advantages of using SOA is
that it is easy to maintain, platform independent, and highly scalable.

Service Provider and Service consumer are the two major roles within SOA.
Applications of Service-Oriented Architecture

There are the following applications of Service-Oriented Architecture -

o It is used in the healthcare industry.

o It is used to create many mobile applications and games.
o In the air force, SOA infrastructure is used to deploy situational awareness
systems.

The service-oriented architecture is shown below:

Grid Computing
Grid computing is also known as distributed computing. It is a processor
architecture that combines various different computing resources from multiple
locations to achieve a common goal. In grid computing, the grid is connected by
parallel nodes to form a computer cluster. These computer clusters are in different
sizes and can run on any operating system.

Grid computing contains the following three types of machines -

 1. Control Node: It is a group of server which administrates the whole network.
2. Provider: It is a computer which contributes its resources in the network
resource pool.
3. User: It is a computer which uses the resources on the network.

Mainly, grid computing is used in the ATMs, back-end

infrastructures, and marketing research.

Utility Computing
Utility computing is the most trending IT service model. It provides on-demand
computing resources (computation, storage, and programming services via API) and
infrastructure based on the pay per use method. It minimizes the associated costs
and maximizes the efficient use of resources. The advantage of utility computing is
that it reduced the IT cost, provides greater flexibility, and easier to manage.

Large organizations such as Google and Amazon established their own utility
services for computing storage and application.
What are the Security Risks of Cloud
Computing
Cloud computing provides various advantages, such as improved collaboration,
excellent accessibility, Mobility, Storage capacity, etc. But there are also security risks
in cloud computing.

Some most common Security Risks of Cloud Computing are given below-

Data Loss
Data loss is the most common cloud security risks of cloud computing. It is also
known as data leakage. Data loss is the process in which data is being deleted,
corrupted, and unreadable by a user, software, or application. In a cloud computing
environment, data loss occurs when our sensitive data is somebody else's hands, one
or more data elements can not be utilized by the data owner, hard disk is not
working properly, and software is not updated.

Hacked Interfaces and Insecure APIs

As we all know, cloud computing is completely depends on Internet, so it is
compulsory to protect interfaces and APIs that are used by external users. APIs are
the easiest way to communicate with most of the cloud services. In cloud computing,
few services are available in the public domain. These services can be accessed by
third parties, so there may be a chance that these services easily harmed and hacked
by hackers.
Data Breach
Data Breach is the process in which the confidential data is viewed, accessed, or
stolen by the third party without any authorization, so organization's data is hacked
by the hackers.

Vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in is the of the biggest security risks in cloud computing. Organizations
may face problems when transferring their services from one vendor to another. As
different vendors provide different platforms, that can cause difficulty moving one
cloud to another.

Increased complexity strains IT staff

Migrating, integrating, and operating the cloud services is complex for the IT staff. IT
staff must require the extra capability and skills to manage, integrate, and maintain
the data to the cloud.

Spectre & Meltdown

Spectre & Meltdown allows programs to view and steal data which is currently
processed on computer. It can run on personal computers, mobile devices, and in the
cloud. It can store the password, your personal information such as images, emails,
and business documents in the memory of other running programs.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks

Denial of service (DoS) attacks occur when the system receives too much traffic to
buffer the server. Mostly, DoS attackers target web servers of large organizations
such as banking sectors, media companies, and government organizations. To
recover the lost data, DoS attackers charge a great deal of time and money to handle
the data.

Account hijacking
Account hijacking is a serious security risk in cloud computing. It is the process in
which individual user's or organization's cloud account (bank account, e-mail
account, and social media account) is stolen by hackers. The hackers use the stolen
account to perform unauthorized activities.