CLOUD COMPUTING Cloud computing is a distributed technology which delivers hosted services over the internet to provide easy

access to IT services. These services are very flexible. A user can obtain a little or a big part of the service which is managed by the service provider.

There are two types of clouds available: Public cloud and Private cloud. A public cloud can be accessed by anyone on the internet but the private cloud is accessible only for the limited number of users. When creating the private cloud using public cloud resources, it is called virtual private cloud.

The five characteristics:

On-demand self-service: individuals can set themselves up without needing anyones help; Ubiquitous network access: available through standard Internet-enabled devices; Location independent resource pooling: processing and storage demands are balanced across a common infrastructure with no particular resource assigned to any individual user; Rapid elasticity: consumers can increase or decrease capacity at will; Pay per use: consumers are charged fees based on their usage of a combination of computing power, bandwidth use and/or storage

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
This type of service allows thousands of users to access a single application through the browser or some kind of front end portal using multi-tenant architecture where a single instance of software runs on a server, serving thousands of customers. Its a profitable system for customers, where theres no need for investing in servers and software licenses. In the service providers point of view, its just one application to maintain, so maintenance costs are very low. SaaS is commonly used on HR applications. But, it can be anything from web based email services to inventory control systems.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
This is a variation of a SaaS. It provides a development environment for developers to create applications on the platform over the internet using development tools hosted on the service providers platform. Usage of this service is not totally convenient to developers, as the development tools are limited to vendors architecture. But they can achieve predictability and pre-integration.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
This type of services provides virtual server instances with a unique IP address and storage. Users can access the server using the service providers API to start, stop and configure the server. In the enterprise, cloud computing allows a company to pay for only as much capacity as is needed, yet purchase more capacity whenever required.

Future Of Cloud Computing

In future, for the security purposes, the large enterprises can be building their own private clouds and the cloud computing service providers will support information security as well. The enterprises will become part time cloud-computing vendors and you need only the browser as a development tool. Game Servers will be the most interesting cloud computing in future.