In and out of cloud computing Literature review

In and out of cloud computing - Literature review Example In an attempt of trying to gain a competitive advantage, businesses are eagerly looking for innovative ways of maximizing profits, while cutting down costs. Their growth ambition is normally hindered by money saving pressure. They therefore try new methods and ideas, which they think can produce better results than what they tried yesterday. It is this innovative technologies growing acceptance that has made clod computing to be the IT’s biggest buzzword (Basset 1997, P.13). However, it is very important for any organization to fully understand what, how, why, and from whom ideas, before jumping into cloud computing. Providers of cloud computing are not the same and their services are different in range and quality, and hence, it is advisable that potential users do a thorough investigation into the nature of services they are bound to receive. According to Basset (1997, p.15), the main economic appeal of cloud computing is that it allows customers to only use what they need a nd only pay for what they use. These resources can easily be accessed at all times from the cloud, from any location, through the internet. It is also called ‘IT on demand’ or utility computing because you simply buy your required IT service, just like any other utility. It makes use of remote servers, which are housed in data centers that are highly secured for data management and storage. Therefore, organizations have no need of buying and looking after their in-house IT solutions. This review aims at assessing the extent to which cloud base computing can replace in-house. Literature Review Key Concepts of Cloud Computing Cloud computing can be seen as a pyramid of three sections. At the apex is cloud application. This is where applications are interacted and run through a web browser, re mote client or hosted desktop. Cloud application removes the install and run application need in the computer of the customer. This removes the need for support, ongoing operations, and software maintenance. Johnson (1998, p.107) asserts that the cloud platform is in the middle, and provides a service framework. It dynamically configures, and reconfigures servers according to the need to cope with decrease or increase in demand. The cloud infrastructure forms the pyramid’s foundation of IT infrastructure via virtualization. It includes, networks, servers and hardware appliances, which act as â€Å"web servers†, â€Å"cloud centers† or â€Å"farms†. Johnson (1998, p.108) concludes that interlinking these with others provides additional capacity and resilience. There are three types of cloud computing namely private, public and hybrid. The public cloud is also called the external cloud and describes cloud computing as often virtualized, dynamically provisioned, and scalable resources that re readily available in the internet, from a third party provider, who is normally off-site, for example ThinkGrid. Private cloud is also referred to as internal or corporate cloud, and denotes a computing architecture that provides a host of private services. It is used by many large companies, but negates many cloud computing benefits, because such companies will still need to buy set up and monitor their clouds. Hybrid cloud combines providers of internal and external resources, thus becoming enterprises’ most popular choice. There are many services that can be achieved via cloud computing by taking advantage e of