Cloud Intro

Cloud computing, envisioned as the next-generation architecture of IT Enterprise, is a new area of research that carries certain ambiguities pertaining to its potential use in the modern era where everyone is much concerned about privacy and security of digital data. Cloud computing utilizes dynamic, scalable and often visualized resources to provide computation and data management services over the Internet. The cloud users generally use HTTP as a medium to avail these services. In cloud computing, the knowledge, expertise or control over the technology infrastructure is ordinarily not needed by the user. The term “cloud computing” is used with relevance of diagrammatical representation of the cloud symbol which is often used to depict the Internet inflow charts. Thus, cloud is an abstraction symbol to represent the underlying complex infrastructure. In cloud computing, the provider builds solution (i.e., software, infrastructure or platform) over the Internet and these services are made available to the users on demand via subscription (Bhaskardeep, 2010).

Theoretically, there are three types of cloud. Private clouds are limited within an organization or a business having its own internal data-center. Therefore, private clouds are not considered a part of cloud computing. The Internet services used by the general public worldwide is known as public cloud. Hybrid cloud is a mix of public cloud environment and isolated resources on private and controlled premises. In this type of cloud, certain aspects of IT infrastructure consisting of storage and computation devices etc. usually run on public cloud, while rest of classified IT infrastructure resides on secure and private premises. A few technologists believe in promoting the transfer of gigabytes of operational data on cloud to fully exploit business intelligence, but a large number of IT professional find the hybrid approach more practicable.