Cloud Computing & Its Services offered

1. Abstract
The present paper discusses about what cloud
computing is and stiffen up our definition and
understanding of this accomplishment. The
paper explores several advantages and
disadvantages including improves availability,
improves performance, cost effectiveness and
flexibility as naming a few. The disadvantages
are complexity, labor cost, security and
integrity. Three organizations namely Microsoft,
Amazon and Google are analyzed in providing
cloud computing services and concluded that
their services are proved to be benefitial.
1. INTRODUCTION
Now a days, cloud computing is used
everywhere. If you pick up any technical
magazine or visit any IT website or blog and
you will be sure to see get the topic about cloud
computing. The only problem here is everyone
does not agree what it is. If you ask ten different
professionals what exactly could the cloud
computing is, and you will get ten different
answers. In 2008 Oracle C.E.O Larry Ellison
chastise the cloud computing as the term cloud
computing was overused and being applied to
everything in the computer world (Cloud
Computing Basics, 2013a). He also said to the
group of Oracle analysis that “the computer
industry is the only industry that is more
fashion-driven than women’s fashion” (Chawle
& Diwaker, 2012).
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Definition of Cloud Computing
One of the best definitions provided by the
literature is as follows;
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling
convenient, on-demand network access to a
shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage,
applications, and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal
management effort or service provider
interaction” (Mell & Grance, 2009).
Actually, Cloud computing gets its name as
a metaphor for the internet. Typically, the
internet is represented in network diagrams as a
cloud. It also exactly means an area of the
diagram or solution that someone else’s anxiety.
So why diagram is all out? It’s probably this
concept that is most applicable to the cloud
computing concept.
Cloud computing promises to cut outfitted and
asset costs and more importantly, let IT
departments kept a spotlight on strategic projects
instead of keeping the data centers running.
But there’s more going on under the top than
simply associate cloud computing to the
internet. In essence, cloud computing is a
construct that allows you to admittance
applications that actually exist in at a location
other than your computer or other internet-
connected device; more often, this will be a
distant data center. There are many remuneration
for this. For instance, think about the last time
you bought Microsoft word and installed it on
your organization’s computers and installed it on
all the computers, or you setup your software
distribution servers to install the software
automatically, then the application is
successfully installed on your machines. And
every time Microsoft issued a service pack, you
had to go around and install that pack, or you
had to set up your software distribution servers
to distribute it. Oh, and don’t forget the cost of
all the licenses. Pete down the hall probably,
which uses Word once a month, but this license
cost just as everyone gets this.
This cloud computing is also convenient for
telecommuters and travelling remote workers,
who can just log in and can use their application
wherever they are.
By using cloud computing, other companies
congregate our applications.
So it all sounds great, right? Not so fast. Cloud
computing is not pardoning. For example: while
an internet outage or problems with your
internet service providers (ISP) are rare, you
may not be able to use your applications and do
your work. Everyone will sit in one office, but if
you currently have the application on your own
local servers, and all those who access it are not
remote, you’d be at least somewhat assured that
an internet outage wouldn’t affect your
application.
Discussion on Cloud Computing Services: A Selective study
V.Prasanna Kumar
Prasannasai76@yahoo.com

2. But it isn’t your connection to the internet that
can be prone to outages. What can be done if the
site you are accessing has problems? It’s already
happened. On July 2008,1 Amazon’s S3 cloud
storage service went down for the second time
that year. A lot of applications were hosted by
the company and all those services could not be
accessed until techs could fix the problem. Some
applications were down for eight hours (Mell &
Grance, 2009).
Also, there may simple applications or data that
you want to be located on site. If you have
sensitive or proprietary information, your IT
security group may simply approve that you did
not store it on someone else’s machines.
You might also find that it is more difficult to
combine your applications if they are
geographically detached. It means, it is easier to
manage and you can also manipulate your data if
it is nearer to you, and not under someone’s
control.
For instance, if you need two applications to
exchange information, it is easier to do if they
both exist in the same place. If you have one
application in the house and it has to connect
another application on the cloud, if it is far it
becomes more intricate (complicated), and more
prone to failure.
In a simple topological sense, a cloud computing
solution is made up of several elements: clients,
data centers, and distributed servers. Each
fundamentals have a purpose and plays a
particular role in delivering their functional
cloud based on the application, so let's take a
closer look.
2.2 CLIENTS
Clients are in a cloud computing manner, the
exact same things that they are in a plain,old,
everyday, local area network (LAN). That is
quite natural, the computers that just sit on your
desk. But they might also be laptops, tablet
computers, mobile phones, or PDA's etc.,
Anyway, clients are the devices that the end
users interact with each other to manage their
information on cloud computing. Clients
generally fell into three categories:
1. Mobile: Mobile device includes PDA's or
Smartphones like blackberry, Windows, mobile
Smartphone, or an iPhone.
2. Thin: Clients are computers that do not have
internal hard drives, but here the server does all
the work but it displays the information.
3. Thick: This type of client is similar to our
regular computer, which uses a web browser like
Firefox or internet explorer which connects to
the cloud (velte, 2009).
Thin clients are becoming an ever more
popular solution, because of their price and
effect on the environment. The benefits of using
these clients include
Lower hardware costs: Thin clients are
cheaper than thick clients because they do not
contain the hardware as much as thick clients.
They also last longer before they need to be
upgraded or become outdated.
Lower IT costs: Thin clients are managed at the
server and there are only a few points of failure.
Security: Main important thing that all
companies required is security for their data.
Here, since the process takes place on the server
and there is no hard drive externally, there is less
chance of malware invading through the device.
Also, thin clients do not work without a server,
there is less chance of being physically stolen.
And for the data, since the data is stored on the
server, there is less chance for the data to be loss
if the client computer crashes or being stolen.
Easy to repair and replacement: If a thin
client dies, it's easy to replace. The box simply
swapped out and the user's desktop will be
returned exactly like it was before the failure.
Less noise: Without spinning hard drive, less
heat is generated, quiet fans can be used on the
thin clients.
2.3 Data Centers
The datacenter is the place where the servers are
collected and applications to which you
subscribe is owned. It could be a large room in

3. the cellar of your building or a room full of
servers on the other side of the world where you
can access via internet.
IT world is the place where the
growing trend which is visualizing servers. That
is the software which can be installed and
allows a multiple instances of virtual servers
which can be used. Like this you can have half a
dozen virtual servers in your own desk. Here,
the number of virtual servers that can exist on a
physical server depends on the size and the
speed of the physical server and what
applications will be running on the virtual
server.
Cloud computing is not one size fit for
all affair. There are several ways by which the
infrastructure can be deployed. The
infrastructure will depend on the application and
how the supplier has chosen to build the cloud
solution. This is one of the most provided key
advantages for using cloud computing. Your
needs may be so that the huge number of servers
required far exceeds which you want or budget
to run those in our house. On the other hand, you
may be only I the need of processing power, so
you don’t want to buy and run a devoted server
for the job. The cloud computing fits for both
the needs. This is which the company,
organization,industry required.
In cloud computing the term services is
the concept of being able to use which is
reusable, fine grained components across a
vendor network. This is comprehensively known
as "a service" offering with a suffix including
traits like the following:
 Low barriers to entry, making them
available to small businesses.
 Large scalability.
 Multitenancy, which allows resources to be
shared by many users.
 Device independence, which allow user to
access the systems on different computers.
The services which offer the facilities are:
1. Software as a service (SaaS).
2. Platform as a service (PaaS).
3. Hardware as a service (Haas).
4. Database as a service (DaaS) (Magoules,
2009).
So now we understood and get to the
question - What does cloud computing actually?
Well, we have applications running on our
laptops, servers, phones. Cloud computing has
the potential to bring them to you. So cloud
computing brings your applications, a way of
presenting, manipulating, and sharing data. Like
their desktop brethren, many "staple"
applications exist in cloud computing, but what
will be the differ in that for you is how you
interact with those applications. In this the most
common things are storage and database. In this
section, we'll take a closer look of storage and
database functionality and for developing your
own interface to work with storage and database.
Cloud computing is simply stored. Here, if you
lease storage space from a vendor, you are not
responsible to buy equipment, pay to run it, and
pay to cool it (walberg, case, durhan, & torres,
2009). That's all burden is on the vendor. But
these are the different options when it reaches
down to cloud storage.
Database are repositories of the
information with links within the information
that helps us to make the database searchable.
Distributed databases like Amazon's SimpleDB,
spread information among the physically
dispersed hardware. But to the clients, the
information seems to be situated in one place
(Eugene, Mutschler, stefaniak, douglas, &
vazehgoo, 2008).
III. Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the study are as follows;
1. To explore the advantages and
disadvantages of the cloud computing
concept.
2. To investigate the services provided by
the cloud computing service providers.
IV. METHDOLOGY
The present paper has referred to the secondary
data available on the Internet. The study
includes three companies analysis towards their
provision of cloud computing services to the
public.

4. V. EXPLORATION OF OBJECTIVES
The explored advantages and disadvantages of
cloud computing are discussed below;
5.1 Advantages of cloud Computing
The advantages are discussed as follows;
1. Improves availability: If there is a fault in
one database system, it will only affect one
portion of the information, not the entire
database.
2. Improves performance: Data is situated
near the site with great demand and the database
systems are examined, which allows the load to
be balanced among the servers.
3. Price: It is very less expensive to create a
network of small computers within the power of
one large one.
4. Flexibility: Systems can be changed and
modified without damage to the entire database.
5.2 DisAdvantages of Cloud Computing
Naturally there will be some disadvantages,
including:
1. Complexity: Database administrators have to
do extra work to maintain the system.
2. Labor costs: With this added complexity
which comes through the need for more workers
on the payroll.
3. Security: Database fragments must be
secured and must be the sites are housing the
fragments.
4. Integrity: It may be difficult to maintain the
integrity of the database if it is more composite
or changes too quickly.
5. Standards: There are currently no standards
to convert a centralized database into a cloud
solution (terman, 1986).
VI. CORPORATE SERVICES
After that, in the fall of 2008 Oracle introduced
three services to provide database services to
cloud users (Hurwitz, Bloor, Baroudi, &
Kaufman, 2007). Here, customer can license.
1. Oracle Database 11g.
2. Oracle Fusion Middleware.
3. Oracle Enterprise Manager.
This product is available for the use on
Amazon Web Services 'Elastic-Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2). Oracle delivered a set of free
Amazon Machine Images (AIMI's) to its
customers, so they could easily, quickly and
efficiently organize Oracle's database solutions.
Apart from this, while your operation is not
as big as Amazon S3 cloud computing, you can
use the same sorts of values within your The
organization to develop your infrastructure of
IT.
By setting up thin clients to run the applications
and services within a local server, other than
their desktops, you can ease the costs of
deployment and maintenance, as well as
reducing power costs.
Satirically, some organizations are using cloud
computing to their corporate intranets. Intranets
are usually used within an organization and are
not accessible or used by the public. That is, a
web server which is maintained in house and the
company information is maintained in the cloud
to access the company's private, in-house
information, users have to log on to the intranet
by going to a secured public web site.
There are two main components here.
Client/Server computing; The servers house the
applications of your organization which needs to
run. The thin clients which do not have hard
drive displays the results.
An application like VMware or Microsoft
Hyper-V allow you to virtualize your servers, so
the multiple virtual servers can run on one
physical server.
These sorts of solutions provide the tools to
provide a virtualized set of hardware to the guest
operating system. They also make it possible
which is to install different operating systems on
the same machine. For example, you may need
Windows Vista to run one application, while
another application requires Linux. It's easy to
set up the server to run both operating systems.

5. Thin clients are used for which application
program is to communicate with an application
server. Most of the processing is done on the
server itself, and sent back to the client again.
There are some argue about where to draw the
line when talking about thin clients. Some thin
clients are in require of the application program
or a web browser to communicate with the
server. However, others require no add on
applications at all. This is a class of a discussion
of semantics, because the real issue is whether
the work is to be done on the server and
transmitted back to the thin client or not.
There are scores of vendors who offers
cloud services based on variations on the vendor
and their pricing models are different, as well.
Let's take a look on some of the big names in the
world of cloud computing briefly (arora, biyani,
& dave, 2007).
Cloud computing is a growing field, and there
will be new players in the market in the
predictable future. The following are the three
organizations selected for the discussion in the
present paper.
1. Amazon
Amazon was in the one of the first
company to offer cloud computing services to
the public, and they are very sophisticated.
Here Amazon is offering a number of cloud
services, which includes
i. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) : Elastic
Compute Clouding is the service which
offers virtual machines and extra CPU
cycles for your organization.
ii. The Simple Storage Service (S3) : The
Simle Storage Service allows you to store
items up to 5 GB size in Amazon's virtual
storage service.
iii. Simple Queue Service (SQS) : Simple
Queue Service allows your machine to talk
to each other by using this message passing
API.
iv. Simple DB : Simple DB is a web service for
running queries on arranging data in real
time. This service works in conjugation with
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon
S3) and Amazon Elastic Cloud (Amazon
EC2), together provides the ability to store,
process, and query data sets in the cloud.
These services are difficult to use because they
have to be done through the command line. That
is, if you are working in a command line
environment, you should not have much trouble
using the services.
 You can see more about Amazon's cloud
services at " http://aws.amazon.com".
2. Google
In desolate contrast to Amazon's offering
is the Google's App Engine. On Amazon you get
root privileges, but on App Engine, you cannot
write a file in your own directory. Google
removed the file write feature out of this as a
security measure, and to store data you must use
Google's database.
Google offers online documents and
spreadsheets, and encourage developers to build
the features for those and other online software,
using its Google App Engine. Google reduced
the web applications to a create a set of features,
and to build a good framework for delivering
them. Google also offers handy debugging
features in this.
 It can be found online at code "
google.com/appengine/".
3. Microsoft
Microsoft's cloud computing solution
is also called as Windows Azure, an operating
system that allows the organizations to run
Windows applications and to store files and data
using Microsoft's data centers. It is also offering
its Azure Services Platform, which are the
services that allows developers to establish user
identities, manage workflows, synchronize data,
and perform other functions as they build new
software programs on Microsoft's online
computing platform.

6. Key concepts of the Azure services
platform include
i. Windows Azure : Windows Azure
Provides a service which hosts and
manages with the low level scalable
storage, computation, and networking.
ii. Microsoft SQL Services : This
provides us the database services and
reportings.
iii. Microsoft .NET Services : This
Provides service-based implementation
of .NET Framework concepts such as
workflow.
iv. Lice Services : This is used to share,
store, and synchronize documents,
photos, and files across PC's, phones,
PC applications, and web sites.
v. Microsoft Share point Services and
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services :
This is used for business content,
collaboration, and solution development
in the cloud computing.
Microsoft plans the next version of Office to
offer a browser based option so that users can
read and edit documents online as well as offers
the ability for users to collaborate using web,
mobile, and client version office.
Although Microsoft is little late to the
cloud party and isn't a leader in cloud
computing. That is the which the honor goes to
Google and Amazon, and more and more
companies are offering cloud services, so if
Microsoft wants to stay competitive, they're
going to pick up the pace.
 Microsoft cloud offerings can be found
online at "
www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx".
Conclusion
For some, the term "Cloud Computing" is
simply hype. But for others who want to
embrace it, cloud computing is a great way for
IT professionals to focus less on their data
centers, and more on the work of information
technology.
REFERENCES
1. arora, p., biyani, r., & dave, s. (2007). To the Cloud: Cloud
Powering an Enterprice. McGraw Hill professional,2007.
2. chawla, S., & Diwaker, c. (2012). Cloud Computing.
International Journal of Applied Engineering Research , 7
(11), 1-4.
3. Cloud Computing Basics. (2013, October 29). Retrieved
November 22, 2013, from Cattlecom:
http://south.cattelecom.com/rtso/Technologies/CloudComp
uting/
4. Eugene, L., Mutschler, o., stefaniak, j. p., douglas, t. m., &
vazehgoo, m. m. (2008). Patent No. WO2008079764 A2.
5. Hurwitz, J., Bloor, R., Baroudi, C., & Kaufman, M. (2007).
Service Oriented Architecture. John Willy and Sons, 2007.
6. Magoules, F. (2009). Fundamentals of Grid Computing . (F.
Magoules, Ed.) CRC press, 2009.
7. Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2009). The NIST Definition of Cloud
Computing. National Institute of Standard and Technology,
Information Tehnology. National Institute of Standard and
Technology.
8. Terman, J. (1986). Stars Wars of Technology Thretens
Satilliets. Bullten of the Atomic Scientists , 42 (05).
9. velte. (2009). Cloud Computing. Tata McGraw-Hill
Education,2009.
10. walberg, s., case, l., durhan, j., & torres, d. (2009). Wireless
All In One. John wiey And Sons, 2009.
Author Profile
V.Prasanna Kumar is
studying Diploma 2nd
year
in Computer Science &
Engineering Dep. from
Arjun College of
Technology & Sciences as
(2014-16 batch) who presented several papers in
Seminars, Presentations and National
Conferences which are being published in
International Journal. Presently working as a
Founder, Managing Director of a virtual
organization named APT Solutions which
provides its services to several Corporate &
Educational Clienteles.

7. Key concepts of the Azure services
platform include
i. Windows Azure : Windows Azure
Provides a service which hosts and
manages with the low level scalable
storage, computation, and networking.
ii. Microsoft SQL Services : This
provides us the database services and
reportings.
iii. Microsoft .NET Services : This
Provides service-based implementation
of .NET Framework concepts such as
workflow.
iv. Lice Services : This is used to share,
store, and synchronize documents,
photos, and files across PC's, phones,
PC applications, and web sites.
v. Microsoft Share point Services and
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services :
This is used for business content,
collaboration, and solution development
in the cloud computing.
Microsoft plans the next version of Office to
offer a browser based option so that users can
read and edit documents online as well as offers
the ability for users to collaborate using web,
mobile, and client version office.
Although Microsoft is little late to the
cloud party and isn't a leader in cloud
computing. That is the which the honor goes to
Google and Amazon, and more and more
companies are offering cloud services, so if
Microsoft wants to stay competitive, they're
going to pick up the pace.
 Microsoft cloud offerings can be found
online at "
www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx".
Conclusion
For some, the term "Cloud Computing" is
simply hype. But for others who want to
embrace it, cloud computing is a great way for
IT professionals to focus less on their data
centers, and more on the work of information
technology.
REFERENCES
1. arora, p., biyani, r., & dave, s. (2007). To the Cloud: Cloud
Powering an Enterprice. McGraw Hill professional,2007.
2. chawla, S., & Diwaker, c. (2012). Cloud Computing.
International Journal of Applied Engineering Research , 7
(11), 1-4.
3. Cloud Computing Basics. (2013, October 29). Retrieved
November 22, 2013, from Cattlecom:
http://south.cattelecom.com/rtso/Technologies/CloudComp
uting/
4. Eugene, L., Mutschler, o., stefaniak, j. p., douglas, t. m., &
vazehgoo, m. m. (2008). Patent No. WO2008079764 A2.
5. Hurwitz, J., Bloor, R., Baroudi, C., & Kaufman, M. (2007).
Service Oriented Architecture. John Willy and Sons, 2007.
6. Magoules, F. (2009). Fundamentals of Grid Computing . (F.
Magoules, Ed.) CRC press, 2009.
7. Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2009). The NIST Definition of Cloud
Computing. National Institute of Standard and Technology,
Information Tehnology. National Institute of Standard and
Technology.
8. Terman, J. (1986). Stars Wars of Technology Thretens
Satilliets. Bullten of the Atomic Scientists , 42 (05).
9. velte. (2009). Cloud Computing. Tata McGraw-Hill
Education,2009.
10. walberg, s., case, l., durhan, j., & torres, d. (2009). Wireless
All In One. John wiey And Sons, 2009.
Author Profile
V.Prasanna Kumar is
studying Diploma 2nd
year
in Computer Science &
Engineering Dep. from
Arjun College of
Technology & Sciences as
(2014-16 batch) who presented several papers in
Seminars, Presentations and National
Conferences which are being published in
International Journal. Presently working as a
Founder, Managing Director of a virtual
organization named APT Solutions which
provides its services to several Corporate &
Educational Clienteles.