Cloud computing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cloud computing metaphor: For a user, the network elements representing the provider-rendered
services are invisible, as if obscured by a cloud.

Cloud computing is a kind of Internet-based computing that provides shared processing

resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling
ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.,
networks, servers, storage, applications and services),[1][2] which can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users
and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data
centers.[3] It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, similar to
a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.

Advocates claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs,
and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure.[4] 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.[4][5][6] Cloud providers typically
use a "pay as you go" model. This will lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not
adapt to the cloud pricing model.[7]

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.[8][9][10] Companies can
scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.

Cloud computing has become a highly demanded service or utility due to the advantages of high
computing power, cheap cost of services, high performance, scalability, accessibility as well as
availability. Some cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per year,[11] but being still
in a stage of infancy, it has pitfalls that need to be addressed to make cloud computing services
more reliable and user friendly.[12][13]
Contents
 1 History of cloud computing
o 1.1 Origin of the term
o 1.2 The 1970s
o 1.3 The 1990s
o 1.4 2000s
 2 Similar concepts
 3 Characteristics
 4 Service models
o 4.1 Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
o 4.2 Platform as a service (PaaS)
o 4.3 Software as a service (SaaS)
 5 Cloud clients
 6 Deployment models
o 6.1 Private cloud
o 6.2 Public cloud
o 6.3 Hybrid cloud
o 6.4 Others
 6.4.1 Community cloud
 6.4.2 Distributed cloud
 6.4.3 Intercloud
 6.4.4 Multicloud
 7 Architecture
o 7.1 Cloud engineering
 8 Security and privacy
 9 Limitations
 10 The future
 11 See also
 12 References
 13 Further reading
 14 External links

History of cloud computing

Origin of the term

The origin of the term cloud computing in computing is unclear. The word "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 further inspected in a given
context.[14] Another explanation is that the old programs that drew network schematics
surrounded the icons for servers with a circle, and a cluster of servers in a network diagram had
several overlapping circles, which resembled a cloud.[15]

In analogy to the 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. Later it
was used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams. With this simplification, the
implication is that the specifics of how the end points of a network are connected are not relevant
for the purposes of understanding the diagram. The cloud symbol was used to represent networks
of computing equipment in the original ARPANET by as early as 1977,[16] and the CSNET by
1981[17]—both predecessors to the Internet itself.

The term cloud has been used to refer to platforms for distributed computing. In Wired's April
1994 feature "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II" on the Apple spin-off General Magic,
Andy Hertzfeld commented on General Magic's distributed programming language Telescript
that:

"The beauty of Telescript ... is that now, instead of just having a device to program, we now have
the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of
information and create sort of a virtual service. No one had conceived that before. The example
Jim White [the designer of Telescript, X.400 and ASN.1] uses now is a date-arranging service
where a software agent goes to the flower store and orders flowers and then goes to the ticket
shop and gets the tickets for the show, and everything is communicated to both parties."

— [18]

References to "cloud computing" in its modern sense appeared as early as 1996, with the earliest
known mention in a Compaq internal document.[19]

The popularization of the term can be traced to 2006 when Amazon.com introduced its Elastic
Compute Cloud.[20]

The 1970s

During the 1960s, the initial concepts of time-sharing became popularized via RJE (Remote Job
Entry);[21] this terminology was mostly associated with large vendors such as IBM and DEC. Full
time-sharing solutions were available by the early 1970s on such platforms as Multics (on GE
hardware), Cambridge CTSS, and the earliest UNIX ports (on DEC hardware). Yet, the "data
center" model where users submitted jobs to operators to run on IBM mainframes was
overwhelmingly predominant.

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.[citation needed] 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 extended this boundary to cover all servers as
well as the network infrastructure.[22]
As computers became more diffused, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-
scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing.[citation needed] They
experimented with algorithms to optimize the infrastructure, platform, and applications to
prioritize CPUs and increase efficiency for end users.[23]

2000s

Since 2000, cloud computing has come into existence. In early 2008, NASA's 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.[24] 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.[25][26] 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"[27] 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."[28]

In August 2006 Amazon introduced its Elastic Compute Cloud.[20] Microsoft Azure was
announced as "Azure" in October 2008 and was released on 1 February 2010 as Windows Azure,
before being renamed to Microsoft Azure on 25 March 2014.[29] For a time, Azure was on the
TOP500 supercomputer list, before it dropped off it.[30]

In July 2010, Rackspace Hosting and NASA jointly launched an open-source cloud-software
initiative known as OpenStack. The OpenStack project intended to help organizations offering
cloud-computing services running on standard hardware. The early code came from NASA's
Nebula platform as well as from Rackspace's Cloud Files platform.

On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet.
[31]
Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a
critical part.

On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud.[32] While aspects of the Oracle Cloud are
still in development, this cloud offering is poised 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.[33][34][35]

Similar concepts
Cloud computing is the result of the 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 helps the users focus on their core business instead of being
impeded by IT obstacles.[36]
The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software
separates a physical computing device into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be
easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization
essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing
resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required
to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic
computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By
minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces
the possibility of human errors.[36]

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 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.[36]

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). [37]
 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."
 Fog computing—Distributed computing paradigm that provides data, compute, storage and
application services closer to client or near-user edge devices, such as network routers.
Furthermore, fog computing handles data at the network level, on smart devices and on the
end-user client side (e.g. mobile devices), instead of sending data to a remote location for
processing.
 Dew computing—In the existing computing hierarchy, the Dew computing is positioned as the
ground level for the cloud and fog computing paradigms. Compared to fog computing, which
supports emerging IoT applications that demand real-time and predictable latency and the
dynamic network reconfigurability, Dew computing pushes the frontiers to computing
applications, data, and low level services away from centralized virtual nodes to the end users.
[38]

 Mainframe computer—Powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical

applications, typically bulk data processing such as: census; industry and consumer statistics;
 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." [39][40]
 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).
 Green computing

Characteristics
Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics:

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

 Cost reductions claimed by cloud providers. A public-cloud delivery model converts capital
expenditure to operational expenditure.[41] This purportedly lowers barriers to entry, as
infrastructure is typically provided by a third party and need not 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). [42] The e-
FISCAL project's state-of-the-art repository[43] 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[44] 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.[42]
 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.
 Multitenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing
for:
o centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate,
electricity, etc.)
o peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)
o utilisation and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilised.
[45][46]

 Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed
using web services as the system interface.[42][47][48]
 Productivity may be increased when multiple users can work on the same data simultaneously,
rather than waiting for it to be saved and emailed. Time may be saved as information does not
need to be re-entered when fields are matched, nor do users need to install application
software upgrades to their computer.[49]
 Reliability improves with the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes well-designed cloud
computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.[50]
 Scalability and elasticity via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained,
self-service basis in near real-time[51][52] (Note, the VM startup time varies by VM type, location,
OS and cloud providers[51]), without users having to engineer for peak loads.[53][54][55] This gives the
ability to scale up when the usage need increases or down if resources are not being used. [56]
  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.[57] 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.

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.

— National Institute of Standards and Technology[58]

Service models
Though service-oriented architecture advocates "everything as a service" (with the acronyms
EaaS or XaaS or simply aas),[59] cloud-computing providers offer their "services" according to
different models,[58][60][need quotation to verify] which happen to form a stack: infrastructure-, platform- and
software-as-a-service.[61]
Cloud-computing layers accessible within a stack

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

See also: Category:Cloud infrastructure

According to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is
that of providers offering computing infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a
service to subscribers. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) refers to online services that abstract
the user from the details of infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data
partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle
VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of
hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines
and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.
Linux containers run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the
physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies
used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance
than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales
dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and
enables usage-based billing.[62] IaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-
machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP
addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.[63] IaaS-cloud providers
supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers.
For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated
virtual private networks).

To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application
software on the cloud infrastructure.[64][unreliable source?] 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.[65][66][67][68]
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Main article: Platform as a service

See also: Category:Cloud platforms

PaaS vendors offer a development environment to application developers. The provider typically
develops toolkit and standards for development and channels for distribution and payment. 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
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.[69][need quotation to verify] Even more specific application types
can be provided via PaaS, such as media encoding as provided by services like bitcodin.com[70]
or media.io.[71]

Some integration and data management providers have also embraced specialized applications of
PaaS as delivery models for data solutions. Examples include iPaaS and dPaaS. iPaaS
(Integration Platform as a Service) enables customers to develop, execute and govern integration
flows.[72] Under the iPaaS integration model, customers drive the development and deployment
of integrations without installing or managing any hardware or middleware.[73] dPaaS (Data
Platform as a Service) delivers integration—and data-management—products as a fully managed
service.[74] Under the dPaaS model, the PaaS provider, not the customer, manages the
development and execution of data solutions by building tailored data applications for the
customer. dPaaS users retain transparency and control over data through data-visualization tools.
[75]

Platform as a Service (PaaS) consumers do not manage or control the underlying cloud
infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but have control over the
deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting
environment.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Main article: Software as a service

In the software as a service (SaaS) model, users gain 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 or using a subscription fee.[citation needed]

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 differ 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.[76] 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, meaning that any machine may serve more than one
cloud-user organization.

The pricing model for SaaS applications is typically a monthly or yearly flat fee per user, [77] so
prices become scalable and adjustable if users are added or removed at any point.[78]

Proponents claim that SaaS gives 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 from
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 comes with storing the users' data on the cloud provider's server. As a result,[citation needed]
there could be unauthorized access to the data. For this reason, users are increasingly[quantify]
adopting intelligent third-party key-management systems to help secure their data.[citation needed]

Cloud clients
See also: Category:Cloud clients and Cloud API

Users access cloud computing using networked client devices, such as desktop computers,
laptops, tablets and smartphones and any Ethernet enabled device such as Home Automation
Gadgets. 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.

Deployment models
Cloud computing types

Private cloud

Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed
internally or by a third-party, and hosted either internally or externally.[58] 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[79] 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,[80] essentially
"[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".[81][82]

Public cloud

A cloud is called a "public cloud" when the services are rendered over a network that is open for
public use. Public cloud services may be free.[83] 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 Web Services
(AWS), Microsoft and Google own and operate the infrastructure at their data center and access
is generally via the Internet. AWS and Microsoft also offer direct connect services called "AWS
Direct Connect" and "Azure ExpressRoute" respectively, such connections require customers to
purchase or lease a private connection to a peering point offered by the cloud provider.[42]

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.[58]

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.[84] 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
business intelligence application provided on a public cloud as a software service.[85] 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. Hybrid cloud adoption
depends on a number of factors such as data security and compliance requirements, level of
control needed over data, and the applications an organization uses.[86]

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. [87] This
capability enables hybrid clouds to employ cloud bursting for scaling across clouds.[58] 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.[88] 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.[89]

The specialized model of hybrid cloud, which is built atop heterogeneous hardware, is called
"Cross-platform Hybrid Cloud". A cross-platform hybrid cloud is usually powered by different
CPU architectures, for example, x86-64 and ARM, underneath. Users can transparently deploy
and scale applications without knowledge of the cloud's hardware diversity.[90] This kind of cloud
emerges from the raise of ARM-based system-on-chip for server-class computing.

Others

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 either 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.[58]
Distributed cloud

A cloud computing platform can be assembled from a distributed set of machines in different
locations, connected to a single network or hub service. It is possible to distinguish between two
types of distributed clouds: public-resource computing and volunteer cloud.

 Public-resource computing—This type of distributed cloud results from an expansive definition

of cloud computing, because they are more akin to distributed computing than cloud
computing. Nonetheless, it is considered a sub-class of cloud computing, and some examples
include distributed computing platforms such as BOINC and Folding@Home.
 Volunteer cloud—Volunteer cloud computing is characterized as the intersection of public-
resource computing and cloud computing, where a cloud computing infrastructure is built using
volunteered resources. Many challenges arise from this type of infrastructure, because of the
volatility of the resources used to built it and the dynamic environment it operates in. It can also
be called peer-to-peer clouds, or ad-hoc clouds. An interesting effort in such direction is
Cloud@Home, it aims to implement a cloud computing infrastructure using volunteered
resources providing a business-model to incentivize contributions through financial restitution.
[91]

Intercloud
Main article: Intercloud

The Intercloud[92] is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds"[93][94] and an extension of the

Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. The focus is on direct interoperability
between public cloud service providers, more so than between providers and consumers (as is the
case for hybrid- and multi-cloud).[95][96][97]

Multicloud
Main article: Multicloud

Multicloud is the use of multiple cloud computing services in a single heterogeneous architecture
to reduce reliance on single vendors, increase flexibility through choice, mitigate against
disasters, etc. It differs from hybrid cloud in that it refers to multiple cloud services, rather than
multiple deployment modes (public, private, legacy).[98][99][100]

Architecture
Cloud computing sample architecture

Cloud architecture,[101] 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.

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.

Security and privacy

Main article: Cloud computing issues

Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider can access the data that is
in the cloud at any time. It could accidentally or deliberately alter or even delete information. [102]
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law
and order even without a warrant. That is permitted in their privacy policies, which users must
agree to before they start using cloud services. Solutions to privacy include policy and legislation
as well as end users' choices for how data is stored.[102] Users can encrypt data that is processed
or stored within the cloud to prevent unauthorized access.[3][102]

According to the Cloud Security Alliance, the top three threats in the cloud are Insecure
Interfaces and API's, Data Loss & Leakage, and Hardware Failure—which accounted for 29%,
25% and 10% of all cloud security outages respectively. Together, these form shared technology
vulnerabilities. In a cloud provider platform being shared by different users there may be a
possibility that information belonging to different customers resides on same data server.
Therefore, Information leakage may arise by mistake when information for one customer is
given to other.[103] Additionally, Eugene Schultz, chief technology officer at Emagined Security,
said that hackers are spending substantial time and effort looking for ways to penetrate the cloud.
"There are some real Achilles' heels in the cloud infrastructure that are making big holes for the
bad guys to get into". Because data from hundreds or thousands of companies can be stored on
large cloud servers, hackers can theoretically gain control of huge stores of information through
a single attack—a process he called "hyperjacking". Some examples of this include the Dropbox
security breach, and iCloud 2014 leak.[104] Dropbox had been breached in October 2014, having
over 7 million of its users passwords stolen by hackers in an effort to get monetary value from it
by Bitcoins (BTC). By having these passwords, they are able to read private data as well as have
this data be indexed by search engines (making the information public).[104]

There is the problem of legal ownership of the data (If a user stores some data in the cloud, can
the cloud provider profit from it?). Many Terms of Service agreements are silent on the question
of ownership.[105]

Physical control of the computer equipment (private cloud) is more secure than having the
equipment off site and under someone else's control (public cloud). This delivers great incentive
to public cloud computing service providers to prioritize building and maintaining strong
management of secure services.[106] Some small businesses that don't have expertise in IT security
could find that it's more secure for them to use a public cloud.

There is the risk that end users don't understand the issues involved when signing on to a cloud
service (persons sometimes don't read the many pages of the terms of service agreement, and just
click "Accept" without reading). This is important now that cloud computing is becoming
popular and required for some services to work, for example for an intelligent personal assistant
(Apple's Siri or Google Now).

Fundamentally private cloud is seen as more secure with higher levels of control for the owner,
however public cloud is seen to be more flexible and requires less time and money investment
from the user.[107]

Limitations
According to Bruce Schneier, "The downside is that you will have limited customization options.
Cloud computing is cheaper because of economics of scale, and like any outsourced task, you
tend to get what you get. A restaurant with a limited menu is cheaper than a personal chef who
can cook anything you want. Fewer options at a much cheaper price: it's a feature, not a bug and
the cloud provider might not meet your legal needs. As a business, you need to weigh the
benefits against the risks."[108]

The future
Cloud computing is therefore still as much a research topic, as it is a market offering.[109] What is
clear through the evolution of cloud computing services is that the chief technical officer (CTO)
is a major driving force behind cloud adoption.[110] The major cloud technology developers
continue to invest billions a year in cloud R&D; for example: in 2011 Microsoft committed 90%
of its US$9.6bn R&D budget to its cloud.[111] Centaur Partners also predict that SaaS revenue will
grow from US$13.5B in 2011 to $32.8B in 2016.[112] This expansion also includes Finance and
Accounting SaaS.[113] Additionally, more industries are turning to cloud technology as an
efficient way to improve quality services due to its capabilities to reduce overhead costs,
downtime, and automate infrastructure deployment.[114]

See also
Computer networking portal

 Category: Cloud computing providers

 Category: Cloud platforms
 Cloud computing security
 Cloud computing comparison
 Cloud management
 Cloud research
 Cloud storage
 Edge computing
 eScience
 Mobile cloud computing
 Personal cloud
 Robot as a Service
 Service-Oriented Architecture
 Ubiquitous computing
 Web computing

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Further reading
 Millard, Christopher (2013). Cloud Computing Law. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-
967168-7.
 Singh, Jatinder; Powles, Julia; Pasquier, Thomas; Bacon, Jean (July 2015). "Data Flow
Management and Compliance in Cloud Computing". IEEE Cloud Computing 2 (4): 24–32.
doi:10.1109/MCC.2015.69.
 Armbrust, Michael; Stoica, Ion; Zaharia, Matei; Fox, Armando; Griffith, Rean; Joseph, Anthony D.;
Katz, Randy; Konwinski, Andy; Lee, Gunho; Patterson, David; Rabkin, Ariel (1 April 2010). "A view
of cloud computing". Communications of the ACM 53 (4): 50. doi:10.1145/1721654.1721672.
 Hu, Tung-Hui (2015). A Prehistory of the Cloud. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02951-3.
 Mell, P. (2011, September 31). The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing. Retrieved November 1,
2015, from National Institute of Standards and Technology website:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cloud computing.

 Evolution of as-a-Service Era in Cloud. A review on as-a-Service Framework (White paper by Dr.
Sugam Sharma), 2015.
 Above the clouds: a Berkeley view of cloud computing, technical report no. UCB/EECS-2009-28,
Feb 10, 2009, http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.html

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What is SaaS, PaaS and IaaS? With examples [closed]

There are various cloud services available today such as Amazon's EC2 and AWS,
Apache Hadoop, Microsoft Azure and many others... So, to which of the above
category do they belong and why?
And which type of service is more popular today and why?

web-services networking cloud saas paas

up vote 155
edited Jul 29 '14 at 16:33 asked May 29 '13 at 17:29
down vote
favorite

92
shareimprove this question

w5m RT_

1,23131535 1,582286

closed as off-topic by Brad Larson♦ May 21 '14 at 14:56

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

 "Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-
topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe
the problem and what has been done so far to solve it." – Brad Larson

If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

First, what is the point of closing useful questions (76 upvotes, 43 favorites)?
14 Second, I am not sure how sorting services into 3 categories can be labeled as a
recommendation of a tool. – Jirka-x1 Jan 3 '15 at 14:45

All of these are type of cloud service models. Question which of these is popular is
irrelevant as it is governed by your business model. For differences refer -
1
Difference between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS explained – Aniket Thakur Jan 24 '15 at
8:37

I find it hilarious that the questions with the most votes, favorites, and up voted
1
answers are the ones that get closed. – Tommy Nov 9 '15 at 2:49

add a comment

5 Answers
active oldest votes

up vote IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are cloud computing service models.
205
down IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), as the name suggests, provides you the computing
vote infrastructure, physical or (quite often) virtual machines and other resources like virtual-
machine disk image library, block and file-based storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP
addresses, virtual local area networks etc. Examples: Amazon EC2, Windows Azure,
Rackspace, Google Compute Engine.

PaaS (Platform as a Service), as the name suggests, provides you computing platforms
which typically includes operating system, programming language execution
environment, database, web server etc. Examples: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows
Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine, Apache Stratos.

While in SaaS (Software as a Service) model you are provided with access to
application softwares often referred to as on-demand softwares. You don't have to
worry about the installation, setup and running of the application. Service provider will
do that for you. You just have to pay and use it through some client. Examples: Google
Apps, Microsoft Office 365.

Few additional points regarding your question:

1- AWS(Amazon web services) is a complete suite which involves a whole bunch of

useful web services. Most popular are EC2 and S3 and they belong to IaaS service
model.

2- Although Hadoop is based on previous works by Google(GFS and MapReduce), it is

not from Google. It is an Apache project. You can find more here. It is just a distributed
computing platform and does not fall into any of these service models, IMHO.

3- Microsoft's Windows Azure is again an example of IaaS.

As far as popularity of these services is concerned, they all are popular. It's just that
which one fits into your requirements better. For example, if you want to have a Hadoop
cluster on which you would run MapReduce jobs, you will find EC2 a perfect fit, which
is IaaS. On the other hand if you have some application, written in some language, and
you want to deploy it over the cloud, you would choose something like Heroku, which
is an example of PaaS.
Meaning For dummies:

IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) :

 The base layer

 Deals with Virtual Machines, Storage (Hard Disks), Servers, Network, Load
Balancers etc

PAAS (Platform As A Service) :

 A layer on top of IAAS

 Runtimes (like java runtimes), Databases (like mySql, Oracle), Web Servers
(tomcat etc)

SAAS (Software As A Service) :

 A layer on top on PAAS

 Applications like email (Gmail, Yahoo mail etc), Social Networking sites
(Facebook etc)

To quickly relate consider the below Google's offerings:

IAAS : Google Compute Engine (One can develop programs to be run on high
 performing google's computing infrastructure)

PAAS : Google App Engine (One can develop applications and let them execute on top
of Google app engine which take care of the execution)

SAAS : Gmail, Google+ etc (One can use email services and extend email/google+
based applications to form newer applications)

Popularity

Company Wise Popularity

Cloud computing is dominated by

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS),

2. Google Compute Engine, Google App Engine
3. Microsoft Azure
4. There are many small and medium scale cloud operators that include IBM, Oracle etc.

Most of the popularity around these services owe to the reputation of the company and
the amount of investments being made by these companies around the cloud space.

Type of Service Wise Popularity

1. PAAS (Platform as a Service) is more popular among developers as they can put all
their concentration on developing their apps and leave the rest of management and
execution to the service provider. Many service providers also offer the flexibility to
increase/decrease the CPU power depending upon the traffic loads giving developers
cost effective and easy & effortless management.
2. SAAS (Software as a service) is more popular among with consumers, who bother
about using the application such as email, social networking etc
3. IAAS (Infrastructure as a service) is more popular among users into research and high
computing areas.

up vote 8 SaaS: Software as a Service Cloud application services or “Software as a Service”

down (SaaS) are probably the most popular form of cloud computing and are easy to use.
vote SaaS uses the Web to deliver applications that are managed by a third-party vendor and
whose interface is accessed on the clients’ side. Most SaaS applications can be run
directly from a Web browser, without any downloads or installations required. SaaS
eliminates the need to install and run applications on individual computers. With SaaS,
it’s easy for enterprises to streamline their maintenance and support, because everything
can be managed by vendors: applications, runtime, data, middleware, O/S,
virtualization, servers, storage, and networking. Gmail is one famous example of an
 SaaS mail provider.

PaaS: Platform as a Service The most complex of the three, cloud platform services or
“Platform as a Service” (PaaS) deliver computational resources through a platform.
What developers gain with PaaS is a framework they can build upon to develop or
customize applications. PaaS makes the development, testing, and deployment of
applications quick, simple, and cost-effective, eliminating the need to buy the
underlying layers of hardware and software. One comparison between SaaS vs. PaaS
has to do with what aspects must be managed by users, rather than providers: With
PaaS, vendors still manage runtime, middleware, O/S, virtualization, servers, storage,
and networking, but users manage applications and data.

IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service Cloud infrastructure services, known as “Infrastructure as a

Service” (IaaS), deliver computer infrastructure (such as a platform virtualization
environment), storage, and networking. Instead of having to purchase software, servers, or
network equipment, users can buy these as a fully outsourced service that is usually billed
according to the amount of resources consumed. Basically, in exchange for a rental fee, a
third party allows you to install a virtual server on their IT infrastructure. Compared to SaaS
and PaaS, IaaS users are responsible for managing more: applications, data, runtime,
middleware, and O/S. Vendors still manage virtualization, servers, hard drives, storage, and
networking. What users gain with IaaS is infrastructure on top of which they can install any
required platforms. Users are responsible for updating these if new versions are released.

up vote 4 IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are basically cloud computing segment.
down
vote IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) - Infrastructure as a Service is a provision model of
cloud computing in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support
operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The
service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and
maintaining it. The client typically pays on a per-use basis. Ex- Amazon Web Services,
BlueLock, Cloudscaling and Datapipe

PaaS (Platform as a Service) - Platform as a Service is one of the GROWING sector of

cloud computing. PaaS basically help developer to speed the development of app, saving
money and most important innovating their applications and business instead of setting
up configurations and managing things like servers and databases. In one line I can say
Platform as a service (PaaS) automates the configuration, deployment and ongoing
management of applications in the cloud. Ex: Heroku, EngineYard, App42 PaaS and
OpenShift

SaaS (Software as a Service) - Software as a Service, SaaS is a software delivery

method that provides access to software and its functions remotely as a Web-based
service. Ex: Abiquo's and Akamai
 add a comment

Question 5

8 Limitations When Designing For Mobile

Jamie Appleseed · March 21, 2012

So you have a website designed for standard desktop computers, but you obviously want to keep
up with times and make your site mobile-friendly too. However, it isn’t just a matter of scaling
down your design – it’s a new platform with a new set of interaction patterns and limitations.

In this article we’ll explore seven eight UI limitations to be aware of when going from desktop
to mobile web.

1) No hover state

On smartphones there’s no hover state (not yet anyways). This can be a challenge for pages with
a lot of content or features as the interface quickly gets bloated with links and buttons that would
normally only be shown on hover. On mobile, any information or feature must be accessed in
either of two ways:

 Visible – the content or feature is accessible from visual means. It may be nested in sub-sections
or child pages, but the content is nonetheless accessed from visible navigational elements such
as buttons or links.
 Convention – by relying on mobile design conventions you may hide content and only display it
when the user employ certain gestures such as swipe or shake, or when the user drags content
around such as pull-to-refresh.

The last approach, convention, can help simplify the interface but also runs the risk of obscurity.
Essentially you rely on the user to a) know the convention and b) try it out on your site to see if
you support it. But if either of those fall flat the user will essentially have no idea that the feature
exist, thus such features should either be explained at first visit or be non-essential to the
experience of the site.

2) Slow and error-prone typing

Typing on a touch keyboard is a slow and error-prone exercise so make sure to keep your form
fields to an absolute minimum and pre-select clever defaults. Furthermore, you need to consider
how you deal with errors in data.

While you’ll certainly need to deal with erroneous data in desktop designs too, there will be even
more errors in forms filled out on touch devices due to the touch keyboard and smaller screen
size (providing less context and overview). Review pages may be a good idea for longer forms if
the user can’t edit the data after it’s been submitted.

Using optimized touch keyboard are key. You may also consider auto-complete functionality, the
use of geo-data, inline validation, address validators, and other methods for suggesting and
correcting user inputs as they are typed.

3) Less context
The smaller screens on touch devices results in reduced context. This tend to make it more
difficult for the user to get an overview of the page, compare various options, and remember
prior content.

Consider a long form. As the user scrolls down, the title of the form disappears along with
previously entered data. Without this context it gets significantly more difficult to interpret the
meaning of the currently visible form fields. It also makes it difficult to spot errors
retrospectively. In this instance a review or summary screen can help avoid erroneous data while
a header fixed to the top of the screen can help maintain context. (A fixed header will of course
lower the screen real estate for unique content so if the context of nearby fields is more important
then this approach would actually reduce the context.)

4) Inaccurate clicks
On touch devices people use their fingers to click links and buttons on the screen, which
significantly decrease the accuracy of clicks. This is also known as the “fat finger problem”.

In practice, this means you must consider the size and proximity of all clickable elements,
making sure they’re large enough to reliably touch with a human finger and far enough apart that
users won’t accidentally touch the wrong element. Navigation and control bars are of particular
importance as they include numerous clickable elements (making accidental clicks more likely)
that all have significant consequences to the page (making accidental clicks more critical).
During our mobile e-commerce usability study we observed a multitude of sub-problems caused
by accidental click, some even leading to abandonments.

One way to deal with accidental clicks is to ask the user to confirm their action but that quickly
gets annoying. A much less intrusive (and typically better) approach is having an “Undo” feature
that allows the user to revert accidental behavior when it happens as opposed to constantly
interrupt the user’s intentional acts.

5) Poor connectivity
It’s not uncommon with intermittent connectivity issues and slow download speeds on
smartphones. It’s really a two-pronged issue:

 No connection – While users probably won’t expect offline mode from your website then you
should still try to handle lost connections gracefully. AJAX-enabled features are particularly
prone to unexpected behavior and silent failures (see navigator.onLine).
 Slow download speeds – If you’re on a mobile EDGE network download speeds will be pretty
miserable. In other words, if your site should be usable on slower connections too then be sure
to make its footprint as small as possible by implementing aggressive asset caching, using CSS3
effects instead of images, etc.

Of course both of these solutions will improve the experience on all types of networks. Lowering
your site’s download footprint will make it super speedy on faster connections. Handling
network issues gracefully will of course be much appreciated by the users the few times they do
experience network issues on otherwise more stable connections.

6) Slow hardware
While the performance of touch devices is improving rapidly, they are still slow devices
compared to desktop computers. This means that page initialization can be upsettingly slow –
especially if you execute a lot of Javascript on page load.

Another issue of slow hardware is that transitions and other animations may be “laggy” which –
besides being aesthetically unpleasing – may wreck the user’s sense of virtual space (or fail at
establishing it in the first place).

In both cases, good programming is paramount. Deferred Javascript execution combined with
liberal use hardware accelerated CSS animations will do the trick in most cases when
implemented properly.

7) Usage situation

Since the very nature of smartphones is mobility you have to consider the impact of “real world”
distractions – a speaker announcement, walking in traffic, etc. Another and possibly larger
source of distractions are the digital interruptions – text messages, phone calls, push
notifications, two-taps-away-from-Angry-Birds-syndrome, and so on.

These two sources of interruptions make the “returnability” of your site increasingly important.
If a user return to your site after a distraction can they immediately pick up where they left or do
they lack essential context? If the page is refreshed will their data still be there despite never
submitting the form (see HTML5 localStorage)? Has the session expired?

It’s a new world

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should give you an idea of some common UI
challenges that arise as you shift from desktop design to mobile. Smartphones have opened up a
new and exciting world but we need to be thoughtful when designing for these devices. It’s a
different platform with its own limitations and opportunities.

For mobile usability research see the related articles below or the 400-page research report with
147 design guidelines on how to design a high performing mobile commerce site.

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Ideas Added:

8) No right-click (added by Jamie)

Custom right-click menus aren’t that utilized on traditional websites, but you do see them in
more and more web apps (e.g. Google Docs) and in most native software. Here, the right-click
menu often acts as a quick context-based shortcut to commonly used features. However, mobile
devices do not have a traditional right-click option. Using a “tab-and-hold gesture” is the closest
substitute that comes to mind.
How Should Your Mobile and Desktop Sites Differ?

Mobile Form Usability: Never Use Inline Labels

6 Mobile Checkout Usability Considerations

UX Research: 7 Reasons B&H Photo’s Mobile Site is Best-in-Class

42% of Mobile Homepages Risk Setting Wrong Expectations for Their Users

Mobile Usability: Allow Users to ‘Search Within’ Their Current Category (94% Don’t)

I think another “limitation” with mobile is that many people forget the other gestures which are
available to the mobile user. Swiping is probably the most useful for moving between pages, items in a
list, galleries of pictures, etc. I see many mobile designs that use the desktop metaphors exclusively.
Maybe that’s the way to describe it: over-use of desktop interaction metaphors.

Here’s one in that category: we initially used a “menu bar” on the top of our mobile website. It
only had 3 items, but the problem was a skinny menu bar along the top of the screen was really a
desktop metaphor. Thankfully we were thinking about tap-target proximity so we didn’t squish
anything TOO close up under them. And Fitt’s law rescued our users from having to hit an
impossibly small target. But the better solution was to get rid of that bar and add a nice juicy
fingertip-sized button that said “menu” and opened a layer with the menu options on it.

Here’s one more since I do this all day: images that are too small to be meaningful. Some mobile
sites and apps use photographs that might as well be inkblots. You can see some shapes and
shading, but you’ll probably just have to make up what you’re looking at.

Not saving the photos correctly, using complex images in tiny thumbnails, or not providing
larger than thumbnail images happen all the time. And logos get this treatment as well.

Using a desktop logo for your brand and just shrinking it down to the mobile space often results
in the “melted crayon” logo. Hey look, there are some colors all mushed together!
Glenn Martin May 15, 2015

I love your melted crayon comment – so accureate

Ed Fairman February 12, 2013

Great article – some useful points raised. I’ve noticed (while using the Nexus 4) that Android
have implemented a fallback for ‘fat finger’ syndrome and will actually zoom into the selection
area if there is an inaccurate click (whether it be a dropdown list, navigation etc) and will give
you better proximity and focus to make your correct selection – a welcomed addition for those of
us with ’butcher’s hands’!

Ian Hunneybell March 27, 2013

At last – many of the downsides/failings of touchscreens well articulated in a single article.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who swoon at new technology, and forget how it has
become worse to use than “old technology” (e.g. pencil and paper).
New methods are great, wonderful, even magical, but they’re never the finished product – there
is always room for critical review and improvement.
Thanks for bringing all of these downsides together. This is a page to which I will refer others.