Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

A Review on Cloud Computing

1
Barun Kumar Thakur, 2Yashpal Singh
1,2
Department of Computer Science &Engineering,
Ganga Institute of Technology and Management,
Kablana, Jhajjar, Haryana, India

Abstract—“Cloud” computing has recently emerged as a new Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies
paradigm for hosting and delivering service on internet. to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects
Builds on decades of research in virtualization, distributed that differentiate their businesses instead of on
computing, utility computing, and more recently networking, infrastructure. Proponents also claim that cloud computing
Web and software services. It implies a service oriented
allows enterprises to get their applications up and running
architecture, reduced information technology overhead for
the end-user, great flexibility, reduced total cost of ownership, faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance,
on-demand services and many other things. This paper and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet
discusses the concept of “cloud” computing, some of the issues fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud
it tries to address, related research topics, and a “cloud” providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This can
implementation available today. lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not
Keywords: “Cloud” computing, virtual computing lab, adapt to the cloud pricing model.
virtualization, utility computing, end-to-end quality of service The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-
I. INTRODUCTION cost computers and storage devices as well as the
widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-
Cloud computing is a recently evolved computing oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing
terminology or metaphor based on utility and consumption have led to a growth in cloud computing.
of computing resources. Cloud computing involves
deploying groups of remote servers and software Cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per
networks that allow centralized data storage and online annum.
access to computer services or resources. Clouds can be
classified as public, private or hybrid.
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.
Cloud computing, or in simpler shorthand just "the cloud",
also focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared
resources. Cloud resources are usually not only shared by Fig 1: Cloud Computing
multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per
demand. This can work for allocating resources to users. BRIEF HISTORY
For example, a cloud computer facility that serves Indian Origin of the term: The origin of the term cloud
users during Indian business hours with a specific
application (e.g., email) may reallocate the same resources
to serve American users during 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, rack space, etc. are required for a
variety of functions. With cloud computing, multiple users computing is unclear. The expression cloud is
can access a single server to retrieve and update their data commonly used in science to describe a large
without purchasing licenses for different applications. agglomeration of objects that visually appear from a
distance as a cloud and describes any set of things
The term "moving to cloud" also refers to an organization whose details are not inspected further in a given
moving away from a traditional CAPEX model (buy the context.
dedicated hardware and depreciate it over a period of time)
to the OPEX model (use a shared cloud infrastructure and The cloud symbol was used to represent the Internet as
pay as one uses it). early as 1994, in which servers were then shown connected
to, but external to, the cloud.

Volume 3, Issue 10 Published by, www.ijert.org 1

Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

References to cloud computing in its modern sense growth in IT products in some areas and significant
appeared early as 1996, with the earliest known mention in reductions in other areas."
a Compaq internal document.
In July 2010, Rackspace Hosting and NASA jointly
The popularization of the term can be traced to 2006 when launched an open-source cloud-software initiative known
Amazon.com introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud. as OpenStack. The OpenStack project intended to help
organizations offer cloud-computing services running on
The 1950s: he underlying concept of cloud computing
standard hardware. The early code came from
dates to the 1950s, when large-scale mainframe
NASA's Nebula platform as well as from Rackspace's
computers were seen as the future of computing, and
Cloud Files platform.
became available in academia and corporations,
accessible via thin clients/terminal computers, often On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM
referred to as "dumb terminals", because they were used SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet. Among
for communications but had no internal processing the various components of the Smarter
capacities. To make more efficient use of costly Computing foundation, cloud computing is a critical piece.
mainframes, a practice evolved that allowed multiple users
On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle
to share both the physical access to the computer from
Cloud. While aspects of the Oracle Cloud are still in
multiple terminals as well as the CPU time. This eliminated
development, this cloud offering is posed to be the first to
periods of inactivity on the mainframe and allowed for a
provide users with access to an integrated set of IT
greater return on the investment. The practice of sharing
solutions, including the Applications (SaaS), Platform
CPU time on a mainframe became known in the industry
(PaaS), and Infrastructure (IaaS) layers.
as time-sharing. During the mid 70s, time-sharing was
popularly known as RJE (Remote Job Entry); this I. CLASSIFICATION
nomenclature was mostly associated with large vendors
such as IBM and DEC. Cloud computing is typically classified in two ways:
1. Location of the cloud computing
The 1990s: In the 1990s, telecommunications companies,
who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-point 2. Type of services offered
data circuits, began offering virtual private network (VPN)
services with comparable quality of service, but at a lower a) Location of the cloud
cost. By switching traffic as they saw fit to balance server Cloud computing is typically classified in the following
use, they could use overall network bandwidth more three ways:
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 all servers as
well as the network infrastructure.
As computers became more prevalent, scientists and
technologists explored ways to make large-scale computing
power available to more users through time-sharing. They
experimented with algorithms to optimize the
infrastructure, platform, and applications to prioritize CPUs Fig 2: Types of Cloud Computing
and increase efficiency for end users.
Since 2000: In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first Public cloud: In Public cloud the computing infrastructure
open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for deploying is hosted by the cloud vendor at the vendors premises. The
private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in customer has no visibility and control over where the
the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, computing infrastructure is hosted. The computing
became the first open-source software for deploying infrastructure is shared between any organizations.
private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of
clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on 1. Private cloud: The computing infrastructure is
providing quality of service guarantees (as required by dedicated to a particular organization and not shared
real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based with other organizations. Some experts consider that
infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European private clouds are not real examples of cloud
Commission-funded project, resulting in a real-time cloud computing. Private clouds are more expensive and
environment. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for more secure when compared to public clouds.
cloud computing "to shape the relationship among Private clouds are of two types: On-premise private clouds
consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and and externally hosted private clouds. Externally hosted
those who sell them" and observed that "organizations are private clouds are also exclusively used by one
switching from company-owned hardware and software organization, but are hosted by a third party specializing in
assets to per-use service-based models" so that the
"projected shift to computing ... will result in dramatic

Volume 3, Issue 10 Published by, www.ijert.org 2

Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

cloud infrastructure. Externally hosted private clouds are The above classification is well accepted in the
cheaper than On-premise private clouds. industry. David Linthicum describes a more granular
classification on the basis of service provided. These are
2. Hybrid cloud Organizations may host critical
listed below:
applications on private clouds and applications with
relatively less security concerns on the public cloud. 1. Storage-as-a-service
The usage of both private and public clouds together is
2. Database-as-a-service
called hybrid cloud. A related term is Cloud Bursting.
In Cloud bursting organization use their own 3. Information-as-a-service
computing infrastructure for normal usage, but access
the cloud using services like Salesforce cloud 4. Process-as-a-service
computing for high/peak load requirements. This 5. Application-as-a-service
ensures that a sudden increase in computing
requirement is handled gracefully. 6. Platform-as-a-service

3. Community cloud involves sharing of computing 7. Integration-as-a-service

infrastructure in between organizations of the same 8. Security-as-a-service
community. For example all Government
organizations within the state of California may share 9. Management/Governance-as-a-service
computing infrastructure on the cloud to manage data 10. Testing-as-a-service
related to citizens residing in California.
11. Infrastructure-as-a-service
b) Classification based upon service provided
II. ARCHITECTURE OF A CLOUD COMPUTING
Based upon the services offered, clouds are classified in the
following ways: A. Cloud Computing Architecture

1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) involves offering

hardware related services using the principles of
cloud computing. These could include some kind of
storage services (database or disk storage) or virtual
servers. Leading vendors that provide Infrastructure
as a service are Amazon EC2, Amazon S3,Rackspace
Cloud Servers and Flexiscale.
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) involves offering a
development platform on the cloud. Platforms
provided by different vendors are typically not
compatible. Typical players in PaaS are Googles Fig 4: Architecture of Cloud Computing
Application Engine, Microsofts Azure,
Salesforce.com, force.com . When talking about a cloud computing system, it's helpful
to divide it into two sections: the front endand the back
3. Software as a service (SaaS) includes a complete end. They connect to each other through a network, usually
software offering on the cloud. Users can access a the Internet. The front end is the side the computer user, or
software application hosted by the cloud vendor on client, sees. The back end is the "cloud" section of the
pay-per-use basis. This is a well-established sector. system.
The pioneer in this field has been Salesforce.coms
offering in the online Customer Relationship The front end includes the client's computer (or computer
Management (CRM) space. Other examples are network) and the application required to access the cloud
online email providers like Googles gmail and computing system. Not all cloud computing systems have
Microsofts hotmail, Google docs and Microsofts the same user interface. Services like Web-based e-
online version of office called BPOS (Business mail programs leverage existing Web browsers like
Productivity Online Standard Suite). Internet Explorer or Firefox. Other systems have unique
applications that provide network access to clients.
On the back end of the system are the various computers,
servers and data storage systems that create the "cloud" of
computing services. In theory, a cloud computing system
could include practically any computer program you can
imagine, from data processing to video games. Usually,
each application will have its own dedicated server.
A central server administers the system, monitoring traffic
and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It
Fig 3: Software as a SaaS follows a set of rules called protocols and uses a special

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Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

kind of software called middleware. Middleware allows 3. Test and development

networked computers to communicate with each other.
Probably the best scenario for the use of a cloud is a test
Most of the time, servers don't run at full capacity. That
and development environment. This entails securing a
means there's unused processing power going to waste. It's
budget, setting up your environment through physical
possible to fool a physical server into thinking it's actually
assets, significant manpower and time. Then comes the
multiple servers, each running with its own independent
installation and configuration of your platform. All this can
operating system. The technique is called server
often extend the time it takes for a project to be completed
virtualization. By maximizing the output of individual
and stretch your milestones.
servers, server virtualization reduces the need for more
physical machines. With cloud computing, there are now readily available
environments tailored for your needs at your fingertips.
If a cloud computing company has a lot of clients, there's
This often combines, but is not limited to, automated
likely to be a high demand for a lot of storage space. Some
provisioning of physical and virtualized resources.
companies require hundreds of digital storage devices.
Cloud computing systems need at least twice the number of 4. Big data analytics
storage devices it requires to keep all its clients'
information stored. That's because these devices, like all One of the aspects offered by leveraging cloud computing
computers, occasionally break down. A cloud computing is the ability to tap into vast quantities of both structured
and unstructured data to harness the benefit of extracting
system must make a copy of all its clients' information and
business value.
store it on other devices. The copies enable the central
server to access backup machines to retrieve data that Retailers and suppliers are now extracting information
otherwise would be unreachable. Making copies of data as derived from consumers’ buying patterns to target their
a backup is called redundancy. advertising and marketing campaigns to a particular
III. APPLICATIONS segment of the population. Social networking platforms are
now providing the basis for analytics on behavioral patterns
Cloud computing has been credited with increasing that organizations are using to derive meaningful
competitiveness through cost reduction, greater flexibility, information.
elasticity and optimal resource utilization. Here are a few
situations where cloud computing is used to enhance the 5. File storage
ability to achieve business goals. Cloud can offer you the possibility of storing your files and
accessing, storing and retrieving them from any web-
1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a
enabled interface. The web services interfaces are usually
service (PaaS)
simple. At any time and place you have high availability,
When it comes to IaaS, using an existing infrastructure on a speed, scalability and security for your environment. In this
pay-per-use scheme seems to be an obvious choice for scenario, organizations are only paying for the amount of
companies saving on the cost of investing to acquire, storage they are actually consuming, and do so without the
manage and maintain an IT infrastructure. There are also worries of overseeing the daily maintenance of the storage
instances where organizations turn to PaaS for the same infrastructure.
reasons while also seeking to increase the speed of
There is also the possibility to store the data either on or off
development on a ready-to-use platform to deploy
premises depending on the regulatory compliance
applications.
requirements. Data is stored in virtualized pools of storage
2. Private cloud and hybrid cloud hosted by a third party based on the customer specification
requirements.
Among the many incentives for using cloud, there are two
situations where organizations are looking into ways to 6. Disaster recovery
assess some of the applications they intend to deploy into
This is yet another benefit derived from using cloud based
their environment through the use of a cloud (specifically a
public cloud). While in the case of test and development it on the cost effectiveness of a disaster recovery (DR)
may be limited in time, adopting a hybrid cloud approach solution that provides for a faster recovery from a mesh of
different physical locations at a much lower cost that the
allows for testing application workloads, therefore
traditional DR site with fixed assets, rigid procedures and a
providing the comfort of an environment without the initial
much higher cost.
investment that might have been rendered useless should
the workload testing fail. 7. Backup
Another use of hybrid cloud is also the ability to expand Backing up data has always been a complex and time-
during periods of limited peak usage, which is often consuming operation. This included maintaining a set of
preferable to hosting a large infrastructure that might tapes or drives, manually collecting them and dispatching
seldom be of use. An organization would seek to have the them to a backup facility with all the inherent problems that
additional capacity and availability of an environment might happen in between the originating and the backup
when needed on a pay-as you-go basis. site. This way of ensuring a backup is performed is not
immune to problems such as running out of backup media ,

Volume 3, Issue 10 Published by, www.ijert.org 4

Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

and there is also time to load the backup devices for a Generic
restore operation, which takes time and is prone to Public cloud offerings are very generic and offer multi-
malfunctions and human errors. tenancy service which all organizations might not be
comfortable with. Implementing an in-house cloud is more
Cloud-based backup, while not being the panacea, is
complex to implement and are burdensome on internal
certainly a far cry from what it used to be. You can now
resources if the organization is not large enough.
automatically dispatch data to any location across the wire
with the assurance that neither security, availability nor Cloud service providers are continuously evolving
capacity are issues. solutions to overcome the above mentioned hurdles. Some
enterprises are seeing clear benefits in shifting to the cloud
While the list of the above uses of cloud computing is not
and are adopting it unconditionally while some enterprises
exhaustive, it certainly give an incentive to use the cloud
are moving non-critical applications to test the waters.
when comparing to more traditional alternatives to increase
Some others want to wait and watch how the technology
IT infrastructure flexibility , as well as leverage on big data
evolves before deciding.
analytics and mobile computing.
V. THE FUTURE
IV. LIMITATIONS
There is a wealth of chatter and hype around the cloud right
For those who follow trends in web hosting, cloud
now, especially as more startups continue to go public.
computing is a term that they come across often these days.
Separating the hype and fleeting trends from the reality is
There are many benefits of cloud computing irrespective of
often difficult. That said, here are my top five cloud
the size of the organization. The benefits include secure
predictions for the coming years:
and affordable managed hosting, accessibility of data from
anywhere at anytime, offsite backup, no need of internal IT 1. More application availability on the cloud
resources, scalability and so on.
But there are some limitations as well since it is still an
evolving technology. Some weaknesses of cloud
computing are listed below:
Cascading effect
If there is a problem in data center, all virtual machines are
affected. There might or might not be a backup of the data
if an enterprise relies only on the cloud for its data
management needs.
Network connection
The concept assumes that the client has reliable network
connection. If there are problems of network connectivity, Fig 5: Cloud application availability
accessing the cloud also becomes a problem. Performance
of the cloud applications also depend on the performance With most new software being built for cloud from the
of network at clients’ side. Upload and download speeds outset, it is predicted that by 2016 over a quarter of all
are slower as compared to that of a local server. applications (around 48 million) will be available on the
cloud (Global Technology Outlook: Cloud 2014: A More
Control of data security Disruptive Phase).
In a public cloud, the client does not have the control over
security of his/ her own data. The clients’ data can be This makes sense when you consider that about 56 percent
susceptible to hacking or phishing attacks. Since the of enterprises consider cloud to be a strategic differentiator,
servers on cloud are interconnected it is easy for malware and approximately 58 percent of enterprises spend more
to spread. than 10 percent of their annual budgets on cloud services.
The Everest Group, in their recent
Additional costs Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey, further argues that
Although cloud computing offers cost benefits, it has some cloud adoption enables operational excellence and
hidden or additional costs as well. Clients are charged extra accelerated innovation.
for data transfer or other services. Initial offerings are
priced higher, till economies of scale work out for the 2. Increased growth in the market for cloud
service provider. According to Gartner, the cloud is here, and it is
Peripherals accelerating globally. Based on their forecast for 2011-
Peripheral devices like printers or scanners might not work 2017, Gartner expects adoption to hit $250 billion by 2017.
with cloud. Many of them require software to be installed In the fourth quarter of 2013, we saw this prediction
locally. Networked peripherals have lesser problems. supported by enterprises worldwide—enterprises that were
increasingly relying on cloud to develop, market and sell
Integration products, manage supply chains and more.
Integrating internal applications with those on cloud can be
complex and in some cases not viable.

Volume 3, Issue 10 Published by, www.ijert.org 5

Special Issue - 2015 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
NCETEMS-2015 Conference Proceedings

In the same forecast, Gartner also suggested that the

worldwide software as a service (SaaS) market would
5. More innovation because of cloud
grow at an astounding yearly growth rate of 20.2 percent!
This means it will be growing from $18.2 billion in 2012 to Increased competition in the cloud space will give way to
$45.6 billion in 2017. With that kind of growth expected, it better products, services and innovation. This last point is a
is no wonder that many are companies are rebranding little counterintuitive for any of us that have read Geoffrey
anything that makes sense “as a service” to get a piece of Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and
the pie. Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers.
Moore writes that after a vendor establishes a new product
3. More hybrid cloud adoption
or service, its pace of innovation drops. Moore suggests
Gartner proposes that 50 percent of enterprises will have that this occurs because companies need to help their
hybrid clouds by 2017. As we see more and more clients adopt the new innovative offering.
companies adopt cloud, we see CIOs crafting well-thought-
Moore named his book Crossing the Chasm after the
out strategies that include cloud. However, pure cloud
phenomenon that refers to how companies need to become
implementations are the exception and not the rule.
more like their existing competitors in order to achieve
4. Increased development for the cloud mainstream success. However, this is not what we have
seen in the industry so far. In fact, the pace at which
More development is going to go to the cloud. According
organizations are innovating appears to have sped up—at
to Evans Data Corporation, there are more than 18
least from my perspective.
million software developers worldwide yet less than 25
percent are developing for the cloud today. We can expect REFERENCES
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