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What is Cloud ?
We have water everywhere i.e., in sea, river, ponds, drains etc., and waters are collected from these scattered places and forms a centralized cloud. And Cloud serves the water need of all through raining.
What is Cloud Computing?
The same analogy of cloud is used for cloud computing as well. All scattered and non optimally used computing infrastructure are collected in a virtual space called cloud, and caters services to all who needs high computing power with low investment. Cloud computing typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.
Architecture
Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, comprises hardware and software designed by a cloud architect who typically works for a cloud integrator. It typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over application programming interfaces, usually web services.
Cloud architecture extends to the client, where web browsers and/or software applications access cloud applications.
Cloud storage architecture is loosely coupled, often assiduously avoiding the use of centralized metadata servers which can become bottlenecks. This enables the data nodes to scale into the hundreds, each independently delivering data to applications or users.
Key Players in the Cloud
Amazon.com, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Salesforce.com, HP, Intel, etc.,
Research Scope in Cloud Computing
As Cloud Computing is a very nascent in research world, hence great scope for research are still open for researcher working currently in almost any domain of computing. The research fields that can contribute a lot are: Computer security, network programmer, system programmer, data base engineer, soft computing, data mining etc., are to name a few.
For our students, at least in depth literature study on cloud computing and making them abreast with the recent challenges in cloud computing and showing interest on a chosen challenge can really change their life, as cloud computing is going to really rule the world of computing very soon.
Further Readings
- http://videos.techielife.com/what-is-cloud-computing/video-online/2008/11/13 [Video]
- http://www.thecloudtutorial.com/ [Tutorial]
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing [Wiki Study]
- www.sun.com/featured-articles/CloudComputing.pdf [Sun White Paper on Cloud Computing]
- http://www.infosys.com/cloud-computing/white-papers/Documents/cloud-computing.pdf
[Infosys White Paper on Cloud Computing]
Author:
Ms. Rashmi Rani Panda
Lecturer in Computer Science |
