Abstract Cloud Computing is being projected by several major IT companies such as IBM, Google, Yahoo, Amazon and others as fifth utility where clients.

Abstract

Cloud Computing is being projected by several major IT companies such as IBM, Google, Yahoo, Amazon and others as fifth utility where clients will have access for processing those applications and or software projects which need very high speed for compute intensive and huge data capacity for scientific, engineering research problems and also e- business and data content network applications. These services for different types of clients will be provided under DASM-Direct Access Service Management based on virtualization of hardware, software and very high bandwidth Internet (Web 2.0) communication. The paper reviews these developments for cloud computing and examines the claims being made by the major cloud computing provider companies and the future prospects of the ISP based services. It also high lights the IT industry’s concerns for cloud computing. 

Keywords: Cloud, cloud computing, cloud Infrastructure, DASM, Utility, Internet

Contents

Introduction. Major Components of Cloud Computing.

The Grid Technology. Role of Virtualization in Cloud Computing. Infrastructure as a Service: IaaS

Types of Cloud Services. The Cloud Computing Architecture. The Global or Worldwide Cloud. Prospects of Cloud Computing. Challenges and IT experts concerns. Risk Mitigation. What is not Cloud Computing. Conclusion

Introduction It will not be wrong to say that cloud computing has

emerged as the off-shoot of HPC Clusters and Grid computing paradigms. The success stories of these technologies and Internet search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN- in the e-Science community around the globe for scientific, engineering, technical and e-business applications has resulted in attracting the attention of big IT entrepreneur companies like IBM, Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems and Amazon towards cloud computing

Simply said, cloud computing paradigm is Internet ("cloud") based development and use of computer technology whereby dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet [1]. Clients need not have knowledge, expertise and control over the technology infrastructure of the cloud that supports them. The cloud computing incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the clients. An often-quoted example is Google Apps [2], which provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on Google servers.

Cloud Computing Components

The major components of cloud computing infrastructure are described here. These components play the central role in providing the services of cloud computing for the Clients.

The Grid Technology Grid computing is an interoperable technology,

enabling the integration and management of services and resources in a distributed, heterogeneous environment. Grid technology provides support for deployment of different kinds of infrastructures joining resources which belong to different administrative domains. For example EGEE [6] or TeraGrid- a large distributed cyber infrastructure available for non-classified scientific research funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF)- is used to federate computing resources spanning multiple sites for application execution and data processing.

The Virtualization in Cloud Computing

The virtualization is a very old concept of computer science. It is a broad term which means the abstraction of computer resources and has also been used by the grid computing community before arrival of cloud computing on the scene. The virtualization of a grid site provides several benefits, which overcome many of the technical barriers for grid adoption [7].

Easy support for VO- Virtual Organizations- specific worker nodes

Reduce grid cycles Dynamic balance of resources between VO’s Fault tolerance of key infrastructure components Easier deployment and testing of new middleware

distributions Distribution of pre-configured components Cheaper development nodes Simplified training machines deployment Performance partitioning between local and grid services On-demand access to cloud providers

Characteristics of virtualization in cloud computing Platform virtualization; which separates an

operating system from the underlying platform resources

Resource virtualization; the virtualization of specific system resources, such as storage volumes, name spaces, and network resources

Application virtualization; the hosting of individual applications on alien hardware/software such as portable application, cross-platform virtualization, emulation or simulation

Virtualization Development; the remote manipulation of a computer desktop.

The concept of cloud computing and how virtualization enables it offers so many innovation opportunities that it is not surprising there are new announcements every day. What clients [9] need to do, however, is to not take a cloud vendor’s announcements at face value, but instead dig into new product offerings to understand if something is really utilizing the full potential of virtualization and cloud computing.

Types of Cloud Services

There are four major types of cloud services [10, 11] as described below:

Services: Products offer internet-based services—such as storage, middleware, collaboration, and database capabilities directly for clients.

IaaS: Infrastructure-as-a-service products deliver a full computer infrastructure via the Internet.

Paas: Platform-as-a-Service: products offer a full or partial application development environment that clients can access and utilize online, even in collaboration with others.

SaaS: Software-as-a-Service: products provide a complete, turnkey application—including complex programs such as those for CRM or enterprise-resource management via Internet.

The Cloud Computing Architecture

The Cloud Computing Architecture is essentially the Grid architecture which consists of several layers of middleware. The Picture-1 depicts the Globus Architecture [10] for Gird. The Cloud Computing will have additional middleware on top of it (like a Shell ) to provide the management and billing etc., for the clients. From the clients perspective, cloud computing is typically universally accessible, massively scalable with vast pools of multi-tenant on-demand resources. These resources are highly reliable , cost effective and utility priced (like electricity, gas, water and telephone). The resources have also low cost barriers to entry ( for capital expenditure, professional services), but none of these attributes are absolute requirements [11]

Worldwide Cloud

The futuristic scenario for development of worldwide cloud i.e. the cloud of clouds covering the globe has been projected in Picture-2 by the IT experts and major could services vendor companies. However, the potential opportunities for the world wide cloud, there have been very few real world examples of applications that can take advantage of this idea.

SOASTA [12] has unveiled an ambitious plan to utilize an interconnected series of regionalized cloud providers for global load and performance testing Web applications and networks. They're calling this new service the Cloud Test Global Platform, which is commercially available today, and is said to enable companies of any size to simulate Web traffic and conditions by leveraging the elasticity and power of cloud computing

Prospects of cloud computing The IT experts and industry observers [9] have

predicted that the cloud computing technology growth potential is enormous. The IT cloud services spending will grow from about $16 billion in 2008 to about $42 billion by 2012 as shown in the Picture-2 which also depicts the breakdown of expenses into business applications, infrastructure software, application development, deployment, server and storage. They also forecast that cloud computing spending will account for 25 percent of annual IT expenditure growth by 2012 and nearly a third of the growth by next year.

Working via large platforms owned by cloud computing providers and shared by numerous clients makes cloud computing less expensive. The shift to cloud computing will greatly reduce the cost of information technology. Cloud computing also lowers the cost of application development and makes the process more scalable. This technology will further encourage the global projects development teams. However, the approach is still relatively new and has not yet been widely adopted

Challenges and Major Concerns A new emerging technology or approach has to face some

challenges, fears, uncertainties and concerns about the technology reliability and maturity. Some of these concerns [9] are highlighted here IT companies are afraid of cloud computing because a

vendor, not the organization’s own staff, designs and controls the platform.

The providers generally do not design the infrastructure to support specific companies’ IT business practices for applications. Clients cannot change the platform’s technology to meet their requirements.

Providers can change it when and how they want it, without clients’ consent.

Performance concerns may stop some companies from using clouding computing for transaction-oriented and vital data-intensive applications.

Some providers may run into problem of Network temporarily face short of capacity. This may happen due to either by provisioning too many virtual machines or saturating their Internet links due to high demand. This will hamper their system performance till they remedy the situation.

The security aspect of cloud computing was rated as the top concern by 75 percent of IT executives and chief information officers in the recently IDC [9] conducted survey. They were worried about security, “with their businesses” information and critical IT resources outside the firewall, clients worry about their vulnerability to attack.

Challenges and Major Concerns

Data stored in the cloud might be used anywhere in the world and thus might be subject to state or national data storage laws related to privacy or record keeping.

While IT companies can save money on equipment and software with cloud computing. But they could face higher band-width charges from their service providers. Bandwidth costs might be low for smaller internet-based applications that are not data-intensive, but it could be very high for a company which makes a multi-terabyte database available by via cloud computing.

Currently there are no cloud computing standards for elements and processes such as APIs, the storage of sever images for disaster recovery, and data import and export. This is currently hampering adoption by limiting the portability of data and applications between systems. The portability aspect will become increasingly important as more cloud providers emerge.

Reliability is another important issue of concern for clients. Cloud computing has not always provided reliability on the 24/7 basis. For example Salesforce.com left clients without service for six hours on 12 February, 2008. Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) services suffered a three hours outage three days later

Risk Mitigation Corporations or end-clients wishing to avoid losing or

not being able to access their data should research cloud computing vendors' policies on data security before using vendor services. The software technology analyst and consulting firm, Gartner[13] has listed seven important security issues in its survey report which should be discussed with a cloud-computing vendor: 1. Privileged client access: Sensitive data processed outside the

enterprise brings with it an inherent level of risk, because outsourced services bypass the "physical, logical and personnel controls", IT shops exert over in-house programs. Get as much information as you can about the people who manage your data. Ask providers to supply specific information on the hiring and oversight of privileged administrators, and the controls over their access.

2. Regulatory compliance: Clients are ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of their own data, even when it is held by a service provider. Traditional service providers are subjected to external audits and security certifications. Cloud computing providers who refuse to undergo this scrutiny are signaling that clients can only use them for the most trivial functions.

3. Data location: When you use the cloud, you probably won't know exactly where your data is hosted. In fact, you might not even know what country it will be stored in. Ask providers if they will commit to storing and processing data in specific jurisdictions, and whether they will make a contractual commitment to obey local privacy requirements on behalf of their clients, Gartner advises.

Risk Mitigation Cont..

4. Data segregation: Data in the cloud is typically in a shared environment alongside data from other clients. Encryption is effective but isn't a cure-all. "Find out what is done to segregate data at rest," Gartner advises. The cloud provider should provide evidence that encryption schemes were designed and tested by experienced specialists. "Encryption accidents can make data totally unusable, and even normal encryption can complicate availability," Gartner says.

 5. Recovery: Even if you don't know where your data is, a cloud provider should tell you what will happen to your data and service in case of a disaster. Any offering that does not replicate the data and application infrastructure across multiple sites is vulnerable to a total failure. Ask your provider if it has the ability to do a complete restoration, and how long it will take.

 6. Investigative support for investigating inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud computing. Cloud services are especially difficult to investigate, because logging and data for multiple clients may be collocated and may also be spread across an ever-changing set of hosts and data centers. If you cannot get a contractual commitment to support specific forms of investigation, along with evidence that the vendor has already successfully supported such activities, then your only safe assumption is that investigation and discovery requests will be impossible.

 7. Long-term viability: Ideally, your cloud computing provider will never go broke or get acquired and swallowed up by a larger company. But you must be sure that your data will remain available even after such an event. Ask potential providers how you would get your data back and if it would be in a format that you could import into a replacement application.

What Cloud Computing is Not Hiro Kishimoto [14] has suggested the following 15 ways to

tell it is not cloud computing:

If you peel back the label and it says “Grid” or ‘OGSA” underneath its not a cloud.

If you need to send a 40 page requirements document to the vendor, then it is not a cloud.

If you can’t buy it on your personal credit card, it is not a cloud If they are trying to sell you hardware, it is not a cloud. If there is no API, it is not a cloud. If you need to re-architect your systems for it, it is not a cloud. If it takes more than 10 minutes to provision, it is not a cloud. If you can’t de-provision in less than ten minutes, it is not a cloud. If you know where the machines are, it not a cloud. If there is a consultant in the room, it not a cloud. If you need to specify the number of machines you want upfront, it is

not a cloud. If it only runs one operating system, it is not a cloud. If you cannot connect to it from your own machine, it is not a cloud. If you need to install software to use it, it is not a cloud. If you own the hardware, it is not a cloud

Conclusion In spite of the fact that the concerns, fears, apprehensions

and reservations of clients for cloud computing described above are very realistic and genuine. However, such concerns are always been there for an emerging technology and cloud computing is no exception to this fact. It is likely that cloud computing is a type of deployment architecture that will be with us for a long time. Its success will depend on whether the cloud computing can overcome the challenges and concerns it currently faces.

Over the next five years, cloud computing services will become a solution for small and midsize companies to completely outsource their data-intensive infrastructure. The larger companies will have a way to get peak load capacity without building in-home larger data centers. While the corporate data-center managers are facing increasing problem with power consumption, space and IT costs. Cloud computing will provide the way most companies will try to contain these IT costs.

Finally cloud computing will become essential foundation for a greatly expanded IT industry by lowering the economic and technical barriers of developers to bring new offerings to market and for billions more clients to adopt those offerings as fifth utility.

REFERENCES

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[2] David Berlind ,"Google improves ‘Apps’, offers organizations clear path off Exchange, Notes, etc. to GMail". ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=580, (2007-06-25). 

[3] LHC Computing Project, http://lhcgrid.web.cern.ch./LHCgrid [4] Running Large-Scale Apps with Massive Databases over The

Internet, http://gloriadclassroom.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/running-large-scale-apps-with-massive-databases-over-the-internet/

[5] Buyya, Rajkumar; Chee Shin Yeo, Srikumar Venugopal. "Market-Oriented Cloud computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities" ,Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved on 2008-07-31.

[6] What is TeraGrid?, http://kb.iu.edu/data/anag.html. [7] Jonathan Erickson, Cloud computing and Virtualization,

june 23, 2008, http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/208800138

[8] Sam Johnson, Cloud computing, Discover Cloud computing (Web 2.0, Web Services, SaaS, PaaS, Grid, Utility, etc.)

REFERENCES…

[9] Neal Leavitt, Is Cloud Computing Really Ready for Prime Time, Technology News, IEEE Computer Society, January, 2009.

[10] Dr. M. Ahmad, Architectural Aspects of Grid Computing and its Global prospects for e-Science community, presented at FIT Intel., Conference, University of Terrengannu, Malaysia, January 25, 2007.

[11]Michael Feldman, Editor, HPCwire, An Open Source Run-Time for Distributed HPC, www.open-rte.org

[12]Kevin L. Jackson, Kyle Gabhart, Reuven Cohen etal, Testing the World Wide cloud, http://cloudcomputing.ulitzer.com/node/846983.

[13] Gartner, Seven Cloud-computing Security Risks , InfoWorld, http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/02/Gartner_Seven_cloudcomputing_security_risks_1.html

[14] Hiro Kishimoto, 15 Ways to Tell Its not Cloud Computing,

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/03/13