Cloud computing is a set of IT services that are provided to a customer over a

network on a leased basis and with the ability to scale up or down their service

requirements. Usually cloud computing services are delivered by a third party

provider who owns the infrastructure. It advantages to mention but a few

include scalability, resilience, flexibility, efficiency and outsourcing non-core

activities.

Survey conducted by international data corporation (IDC) shows the strength of

cloud computing to be implemented in IT industry and gives the potential

inspiration to CSP. The section contains the survey related to the growth of

cloud, security aspect, cloud is the first priority to the vendors, revenue

report, future and current usage, state of cloud to the IT users and popularity

survey of cloud computing.

a) Cloud growth

The Table 1 shows the cloud growth from year 2008 to 2012 [4].

Table 1: Cloud Growth

Y 2 2 GCloud

IT

$

$42

B

2

7%Total $ $ 7T $ $ 4Cloud 4 9

b) Survey on cloud security

The Fig. 1 shows the survey on security. This represents security as first rank

according to IT executives. This information is collected from 263 IT

professional by asking different question related to the cloud [5], and many of

the executives are worried about security perspective of cloud.

Figure 1: cloud security survey [5]

b) Top ten technology priorities

This report displayed in Fig 2 collected at the end of 2010 by IDC. This shows

that now a days the cloud computing is the first priority by organization in the

field of technology [4]

PERTINENT ISSUES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing services face a wide variety of legal issues and concerns, many

of which represent obstacles for customers. The problem is that many customers of

cloud services hesitate to commit without understanding their legal standing,

however, just as many remain unaware of cloud-related legal issues before they

start using services. It’s important to understand cloud computing security as a

practical concern as well as a legal one.

The Top 5 Cloud Computing Concerns Today

1. Security

The most compelling challenge for someone attempting to switch from their existing computing module to the cloud is to ascertain how secure cloud computing is. Aficionados of conventional computing often allege that the extensive use of virtualization, which is a fundamental tenant of cloud computing, only adds viable security risks. Virtualization software might be compromised which could jeopardize the entire infrastructure which includes cloud computing, storage and networking.

2. PERFORMENCE

Inherent cloud tenants that like increased availability, on-demand resource provisioning and

scalability are all designed to deliver peak performance and enhance the overall usability of

applications and data hosted in the cloud. The most common mistake that people make is

equating application performance issues with cloud computing environment. When a cloud

computing subscriber selects a cloud computing flavour not well aligned with their business

module, the performance is, at best, degraded. However, that does not mean that from time

to time some performance issues that are totally centric to cloud computing environment do

not arise.

3. COST

Pay-As-You-Go is the unique payment method introduced by cloud computing. This method entails that the subscriber is only charged for the resources consumed (e.g. bandwidth consumed, storage used, or enhanced processor time requested). Utilizing cloud computing also renders maintaining on-premises optimized hardware, having a team on site to maintain it and worrying about managing costly software licenses. Needless to say that all of these aspects are considerable cost savers!

4. Service Level Agreement

Although cloud consumers do not have control over the underlying computing resources, they do need to ensure the quality, availability, reliability, and performance of these resources when consumers have migrated their core business functions onto their entrusted cloud. In other words, it is vital for consumers to obtain guarantees from providers on service delivery. Typically, these are provided through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) negotiated between the providers and consumers. The very first issue is the definition of SLA specifications in such a way that has an appropriate level of granularity, namely the trade-offs between expressiveness and complicatedness, so that they can cover most of the consumer expectations and is relatively simple to be weighted, verified, evaluated, and enforced by the resource allocation mechanism the cloud.

5. DATA LOSS & DISASTER

Cloud computing environments irrespective of their flavour provide stringent data loss prevention and disaster recovery measures. Client’s data hosted in the cloud is routinely backed up and stored safely so it can be readily accessed in case of emergency. Thanks to the virtualization aspect (which is uselessly criticized by conventional computing proponents) it is possible to maintain an identical copy of the entire setup including the operating system, applications, patches and data.

Top Five Non Functional Requirements Challenges Of Cloud Computing

Companies are increasingly aware of the business value that cloud computing brings and are taking steps towards transition to the cloud. A smooth transition entails a thorough understanding of the benefits as well as challenges involved. Like any new technology, the adoption of cloud computing is not free from issues.

Some of the most important Non Functional Requirement (NFR) challenges are as follows.

1. Security and Privacy

The main challenge to cloud computing is how it addresses the security and privacy concerns of businesses thinking of adopting it. The fact that the valuable enterprise data will reside outside the corporate firewall raises serious concerns. Hacking and various attacks to cloud infrastructure would affect multiple clients even if only one site is attacked. These risks can be mitigated by using security applications, encrypted file systems, data loss software, and buying security hardware to track unusual behavior across servers.

2. Service Delivery and Billing

It is difficult to assess the costs involved due to the on-demand nature of the services. Budgeting and assessment of the cost will be very difficult unless the provider has some good and comparable benchmarks to offer. The service-level agreements (SLAs) of the provider are not adequate to guarantee the availability and scalability. Businesses will be reluctant to switch to cloud without a strong service quality guarantee.

3. Interoperability and Portability

Businesses should have the leverage of migrating in and out of the cloud and switching providers whenever they want, and there should be no lock-in period. Cloud computing services should have the capability to integrate smoothly with the on-premise IT.

4. Reliability and Availability

Cloud providers still lack round-the-clock service; this results in frequent outages. It is important to monitor the service being provided using internal or third-party tools. It is vital to have plans to supervise usage, SLAs, performance, robustness, and business dependency of these services.

5. Performance and Bandwidth Cost

Businesses can save money on hardware but they have to spend more for the bandwidth. This can be a low cost for smaller applications but can be significantly high for the data-intensive applications. Delivering intensive and complex data over the network requires sufficient bandwidth. Because of this, many businesses are waiting for a reduced cost before switching to the cloud.

All these challenges should not be considered as road blocks in the pursuit of cloud computing. It is rather important to give serious consideration to these issues and the possible ways out before adopting the technology.

Security and Privacy