Cloud computing is a kind of Internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services), which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-partyd ata centers.[3] It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.
Advocates claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure.[4] Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.[4][5][6] Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This will lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the cloud pricing model.[7]
The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing.[8][9][10] Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.
Cloud computing has become a highly demanded service or utility due to the advantages of high computing power, cheap cost of services, high performance, scalability, accessibility as well as availability. Some cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per year,but being still in a stage of infancy, it has pitfalls that need to be addressed to make cloud computing services more reliable and user friendly.
Origin of the term
The origin of the term cloud computing is computing its is unclear. The word "cloud" is commonly used in science to describe a large agglomeration of objects that visually appear from a distance as a cloud and describes any set of things whose details are not further inspected in a given context. Another explanation is that the old programs that drew network schematics surrounded the icons for servers with a circle, and a cluster of servers in a network diagram had several overlapping circles, which resembled a cloud.
In analogy to the above usage, the word cloud was used as a metaphor for the Internet and a standardized cloud-like shape was used to denote a network on telephony schematics. Later it was used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams. With this simplification, the implication is that the specifics of how the end points of a network are connected are not relevant for the purposes of understanding the diagram. The cloud symbol was used to represent networks of computing equipment in the original ARPANET by as early as 1977,and the CSNET by 1981—both predecessors to the Internet itself.
The term cloud has been used to refer to platforms for distributed computing. In Wired's April 1994 feature "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II" on the Apple spin-off General Magic, Andy Hertzfeld commented on General Magic's distributed programming language Telescript that:
References to "cloud computing" in its modern sense appeared as early as 1996, with the earliest known mention in a Compaq internal document
The popularization of the term can be traced to 2006 when Amazon.com introduced its Elastic Compute Cloud.
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