Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

There are undoubtedly a great deal of advantages to cloud computing, no matter your business size, however its important to remember that while the hype around the latest computing advancement can be justified, it can also be matched with a good few negative points. As with anything technological, cloud computing has its weaknesses, and here are some of the biggest.

Reliant on Network Connections: The most obvious disadvantage is that it completely relies on network connections. If the network goes down, you're pretty much done working until it comes back up. What's probably even more frustrating is if you're network is running slowly, you're work's going to be running slowly too.

Lack of Hard Drive: While lack of a hard drive is a benefit when it comes to hardware costs, it can also be a disadvantage to you if you use programs that rely on an attached hard drive. While this is becoming less of a problem, you can still find yourself having trouble trying to get programs to connect to the hard drive on your remote server.

Connection of Peripherals: Now this is one of the biggies. While you can find nearly all peripheral devices with wireless capabilities, connecting the wireless to what is effectively the wireless, is not the easiest of tasks. You'll probably have issues with personal devices on a smaller scale but bigger companies that have a networked system of peripherals will probably find it a bit easier. The other issue is software. Many devices will run on software designed to relate specifically to the PC which means that, while you may be able to access your cloud accounts from anywhere, you'll only be able to print/scan etc from a PC with the software installed.

Expense: Although cloud computing can show you financial benefits in the long term, it's not the cheapest of solutions to get set up if you're doing it on a smaller scale. Sure, if you're a big business who can shell out quick cash for quick benefits its all good, but there's no cheap way around it for those of you wanting to test the water before you jump. It's all or nothing unfortunately. Cloud expenses also seep back to the data centers who have to shell out for new software that can actually run the cloud as well as update, rewire, purchase new machines to keep up too.

Legal Ownership of Data: This can get a bit confusing as most cloud providers will have different terms and conditions regarding ownership of data. The most important thing to do if you're moving into the cloud is to read the fine print and understand things like when you will have access to your data, what happens to your data if the provider suddenly disappears, what happens in the event data is lost, distribution rights etc. Also note if there is any rules that you could breach which could prevent you from accessing your data.

Security & Backup: Now I know we've mentioned this one in the advantages of cloud computing section but there's a good reason it appears in both. Although the cloud can result in less data loss because of its frequent backup's, the fact that its servers are interconnected means it's an 'all for one and one for all' system when it comes to attacks and intrusions.

Although there is no doubt that these flaws with cloud computing will be ironed out as the phenomenon progresses, as we speak even, they're still very prominent at the moment and should definitely be taken into account when you're deciding if the cloud is right for you.

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Advantages of Cloud Computing

So you've just about got your head around the basics of cloud computing, you've been told that it's an amazing advancement for your business and it's the way forward, but what now? Technology and marketing research specialists, Gartner, has said that by 2012 80% of America's 1000 biggest businesses will pay for a cloud computing service, but what does that mean for you? Why should you bother investing in the cloud? Here are some of the biggest benefits of cloud computing:

Scalability: The biggest buzz word surrounding cloud computing is scalability. The ability to increase or decrease your cloud capacity as the network usage fluctuates which means, in theory, you shouldn't suffer from any crashes or downtime as you can simply contact your cloud provider and increase capacity. The main advantage of this to both personal users and businesses is that you only pay for what you use and the process of altering capacity takes just minutes.

Remote Accessibility: The obvious major advantage of cloud computing is its accessibility. Whether you're a big business or a personal user you're able to access your data from any PC with an internet connection, as long as you remember your log-ins of course.

Quality of Service: As with choosing any web host, choosing your cloud host comes with a check list. Some of the main points on the list are often quality of service and up-time, something which is vital for a network running solely on internet connections. Cloud providers will often employ skilled practitioners to manage the networks and make sure that down time is as close to zero as possible. Along with this you should expect 24/7 support from your vendor and immediate action to be taken if your network goes down. Though it may be annoying for you to sit at the other end twiddling your thumbs if your network goes down, it should give you some piece of mind knowing that professionals are sorting it out.

Security & Backup: A great advantage of the cloud, especially for businesses, is the option of having real-time or frequent automatic backups. This results in little data loss and takes away the hassle of sourcing a backup provider and paying a separate cost. With security, the cloud's allusiveness means that cloud servers are less prone to attacks/hacks as the location of data is unknown. Again, for businesses, you have the option of an internal cloud with provides even more security, hiding your cloud behind a firewall or passwords.

Cost & Efficiency: Implementing any new system into a business is never easy work, but without the need to purchase and set up a load of new hardware, moving a business into the cloud is as easy as it's ever going to get. Most of the work is left in the hands of the cloud provider, as well as most of the costs. This advantage means that you'll be able to focus on any changes within the company and leave the rest to the experts. (It is important to note that financial advantages of the cloud are often only seen in the long term - see Disadvantages of Cloud Computing.)

Doing Your Bit: Though it's not necessarily a deal breaker when it comes to making the decision to move into the cloud, the satisfaction of being more environmentally friendly is an added bonus. The limited hardware will reduce your electricity usage and expenses while the lack of equipment required to cool and run servers will reduce your dangerous emissions to the environment.

Although cloud computing certainly has its benefits, if you're considering the cloud for your business or even want to discuss the latest trend, then its also important to look at the downside too.

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Cloud Computing: An Introduction To Cloud Computing Services

As the Information Technology Industry is expanding its wings like never before, various new services are emerging rapidly. Cloud computing is one of the most recognized services of all nowadays. The number of advantages and facilities that cloud computing provides makes it a popular service amongst all IT professionals.

What is cloud computing and what are its benefits?

First of all, lets see the definition of cloud computing. It can be defined as a computing service that provides users accurate and efficient computing resources and services via the Internet. In other words, numerous shared resources, computing software and useful information are provided to user's computers via Internet's medium.

Let's take an example to understand this. Suppose there is a newly developed company and it wants to use software to maintain records. For that it needs to first buy a server and then to install software. After that, it will need a staff such as network engineer and other technicians to maintain this software. It will also have to deal with salaries of these people.

But if it uses cloud options instead, then it will not be facing such financial issues anymore. If it consults a cloud provider, then that provider hosts that software by third party servers that are reachable through the Internet. So that company will only pay for the software and services it uses - no need to pay for costs like hosting. Suppose the company uses accounting software and its services, then it will have to pay only for the amount of usage of that particular software - nothing more than that.

Definitely cloud software and services can prove to be the backbone of any company's growth and success. Many companies are using it effectively and larger number of companies is going to use it in coming future.

So if you would like to get more information regarding cloud computing services, then please feel free to contact us at: http://www.globalcloudsolutions.com/

Henry Scott
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Introduction to Cloud Computing Platforms

Cloud computing refers to the use of multiple server-based computational resources. These resources can be accessed through various digital networks such as WAN, Internet, etc. The resources of the server can be accessed by Smartphones, tablet PCs, Notebooks or other such type of devices having network connectivity.

In cloud computing, all the data and applications are managed by the cloud server. Such servers are usually provided by third parties. For example, Microsoft provides "Azure" as a platform for cloud computing. The cloud provides server-based applications and all the data services to the users with the output which is displayed on the client device. Cloud services works on various platforms such as Linux, MAC and Windows. As the cloud servers are remotely hosted and they could be accessed through the internet, it requires a high speed and very reliable internet connection.

The two important characteristics of the cloud computing are:

• Front end
• Back end

The front end is what a cloud computing user can see and the back end is the cloud servers hosting the various computers, services etc. Cloud computing platforms have many advantages. Few of them are listed below:-

1. Reduced Cost: Organizations save money as they do not have to spend money for creating the required infrastructure. In fact, they only have to hire it.


2. Increased Storage: Organizations can store more data to the cloud servers than on private computers.


3. Highly Automated: The task of cloud computing providers is to keep their software up to date, thereby keeping the pace with the current technology.


4. Flexibility: Cloud computing offers much more flexibility than past computing methods.


5. More Mobility: As the services are available anywhere from the world provided there is good network connectivity, users can work from anywhere.


6. Allows IT to Shift Focus: There is no worry about constant server updates and other computing issues. Organizations can concentrate more on their work rather than thinking of maintaining the hardware or software.


7. Security: Clouds tend to be more secure than the traditional business models. Clouds offer real-time backup which results in less data loss. In case of outage, customers can use the backup servers that sync with the main ones as soon as they are up.

Let's now discuss different types of Cloud Services:

• SaaS (Software as a Service): A service provider builds software while the end users configure it to suit their needs. The clients (end users) however, do not get the flexibility to change or modify the software.


• PaaS (Platform as a Service): provides a platform to clients to carry out several different tasks. For example, the platform provided by the Windows gives an opportunity to developers to build, test, and host applications that can be accessed by the end users.


• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Provides infrastructure on demand. The infrastructure can be anything from storage servers to applications to operating systems.

In short, we can say that with the advent of cloud computing, a dynamic change has been reported in the software industry as many software development companies look to gain on this opportunity. As the name suggest, Cloud platforms provide a potential platform for developers to write application as well as to use services provided by the cloud.

Author's bio:
David Frankk is the author of this article. He has been writing articles for many mobile application development companies like Q3 Technologies. Moreover, he has been actively involved in providing useful content writing material related to java software development.

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Introduction to Cloud Computing

1. Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the data centers that provide those services. The data center hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. Cloud computing is relatively new concept and it has become popular recently. Cloud leverages virtualization technology and in the essence of Cloud computing there is a logical separation between different nodes, each node appears as a different physical machine to the user. Unlike grid computing, it makes several distributed computers connected together to form a big logical computer which can handle large amount of data and computation. In case of Cloud computing the virtualization technology makes it possible to have each node appear as separate physical machine allowing user to load custom software and operating system on each node and configure custom rules for each node.

The idea of Cloud computing is evolved from parallel processing, distributed computing and grid computing. There is a bit similarity between them but they work differently. Although Cloud computing is an emerging field of computer science, the idea has been around for a few years. It's called Cloud computing because the data and applications exist on a "cloud" of Web servers. To simplify the concept, Cloud computing can be defined as simply the sharing and use of applications and resources of a network environment to get work done without concern about ownership and management of the network's resources and applications. According to Scale, with Cloud computing, computer resources for getting work done and their data are no longer stored on one's personal computer, but are hosted elsewhere to be made accessible in any location and at any time.

2. Related Technology Comparison

2.1. Grid computing A form of distributed computing and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks

2.2. Utility computing The packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity.

2.3. Autonomic computing

Computer systems capable of self management.

3. General mechanism

Cloud computing using information technology as a services over the network. The concept generally encompasses of Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) Hardware as a Service (HaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). It can be the ability to rent a server or servers and run a geophysical modeling application available anywhere. It can be the ability to (S Rupley, 2009) rent a virtual server, load software on it, turn it on and off at will, or clone it to meet a sudden workload demand. It can be storing and securing large amounts of data that is accessible only by authorized applications and users. It can be supported by a cloud provider that sets up a platform with the ability to scale automatically in response to changing workloads. It can be using a storage cloud to hold application, business, and personal data. And it can be the ability to use a handful of Web services to integrate photos, maps, and GPS information to create a front page in customer Web browsers.

In a cloud computing system, there is a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to run applications. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles them instead. In this situation the demand of hardware and software on the user's side is decreased. Let the cloud take care of it. The only thing that local computers should aware is the interface software that will run the application. Today's, a Web Browser such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 is widely use as an interface software in cloud computing system.

The truth is, internet users already used some form of cloud computing. If they have an email account with a Webbased email service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then they had some experience with cloud computing. Instead of running an email program on a local computer, user will log in to a Web email account remotely. The software and storage for the account does not exist in the local computer it is on the service's computer cloud.

4. Key characteristic of Cloud Computing

Currently, there is no standard definition or specification for Cloud Computing. It may take some time to define the key characteristics of Cloud Computing based on practices in the field.Based on practices in the areas of service provisioning and solution design, the following two key enabling technologies could play a vital role in this revolutionary phase of cloud computing:

4.1. Virtualization technology

Virtualization technology works to handle on how the image of the operating system, middleware, and application procreated and allocated to a physical machine or part of the server stack away. The virtualization technology can also help reuse licenses of operating systems, middleware, or software applications, once a subscriber releases their service from the Cloud Computing platform.

4.2. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

A service oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed. The evolution of a system or software architecture is now moving towards services oriented, unlike several decades ago most of the application is stand alone and purposely for single use. Recently, the gigantic growth of the internet user and internet technology availability the use of software now can be rented. Giant company such as Google, Microsoft, Sun or even Amazon have this capability provide software services instead of selling the software directly to user. The SOA is software or system architecture that addressing componentization, reusability, extensibility, and flexibility. These entire characteristic is a fundamentals need for company that are looking for reducing cost and opt to rent instead of purchase.

Cloud Computing full document

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PHP

The PHP generally stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is nothing but a server side scripting language that permits the web developers to generate dynamic content to interrelate with the database. PHP is a scripting language just like the Active Server Pages. PHP is mainly made use for generating web based software application. PHP gives a healthy strong support to quite a large number of databases likeOracle, Sybase, Solid,MySQL, Informix, and Generic Open DataBase Connectivity. PHP is a free of charge to download and use. PHP could be written as scripts that exist on the server and it could generate HTML output inorder to download the web browser.

On the other hand PHP can be embedded and routed in HTML pages which are then saved with an extension of .php. Next the PHP sector of the pages are then parsed on the server by the PHP engine and then the PHP code is removed out early before the pages are download to the web browser. As PHP is embedded with tags the creator could move about between HTML and PHP inspite of making use of a hefty number of codes. Since PHP is carried out and accomplished on the server, the codes are not visualized to the spectators. The very same task could be carried out and achieved in PHP as a CGI program and it is well-matched with several different kinds of databases.

When discussing about the PHP file, the file has the ability to hold text, scripts and HTML tags. Generally the PHP files have a file extension of ".phtml", ".php" and ".php3". Normally the PHP files are returned back to the browsers as a simple HTML code. Above all PHP acts as a filter. The PHP program captures the input from the file or a stream enclosing texts and also some particular information directives and outputs the other stream of data for the view. From PHP 4, the PHP parser compiles the input to generate byte codes for dealing by the Zend Engine for presenting a superior presentation over its interpreter predecessor. The Zend Engine II is the central part of PHP5. Scripting language is used to build interactivity of database and also to generate dynamic content on the Web which is frequently used with MySQL.

PHP is quite easy to understand and learn. PHP has the capability to run on several platforms and also it runs more effectively on the server side. PHP is well-suited with all servers like IIS and Apache which are used these days. PHP never charges to download. It is easily downloaded from the official PHP resource. Scripting language and interpreter is obtained freely and it is mainly used on Linux Web servers. PHP is just a substitution of ASP technology. PHP is a healthy and a good programming language which is akin to ASP and the only difference is that it runs on UNIX servers instead of Windows based servers. It is made use of linking a database and also to generate all kinds of web applications like altering content, calendars, e-commerce and product catalogs.

Nila Priya - PHP

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Features of PHP Based Web Development

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a scripting language used for developing dynamic websites. Now, if you have no knowledge about dynamic websites and how they look like, then you can consider the most common example of news websites, where fresh information is updated on a continuous basis. The dynamic websites are not limited to news websites but are actively used by organizations to do business over the Internet.

In order to create website by using this scripting language, certain PHP codes are set into the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files. The codes are then interpreted with a PHP processor module over the web server to develop web pages. The PHP codes in the file can be performed by the PHP runtime to change content, images or any other existing thing on the websites.

If you want to know how you will be benefitted by this open source language, then take a look at the following features of PHP website development:

* PHP Extension and Application Repository system helps to maintain PHP codes to handle certain functions like encryption, authentication, caching, managing errors etc.
* This open source language is highly compatible with operating systems and web servers for bug-free web development.
* It can be used to access files and documents in different formats including PDF, XML etc.
* PHP compilers help to optimize the codes for high-quality performance. The compiled codes can be easily cached by using PHP accelerators like xcache, eAccelerator etc
* It includes cookie management features to create and develop customized web pages.
* It helps to access images and graphics anytime, so that the user can make changes to the existing information as per their requirements. Further, by using this language, images can be created in various formats like gif, jpeg etc
* The functionalities in this scripting language enable PHP developers to identify the bottlenecks and help them to develop bug-free websites.

After having clear-idea about the features of PHP for web development purposes, you can consider taking help from professionally talented and experienced PHP developers. There are many PHP developers who are working with reliable and experienced web development companies. You can consider outsourcing your web development project to PHP developers who will provide you the best web-based solution at affordable rates.

For taking their assistance, you need to spare out some time to get in touch with a certified PHP developer and plan to have a dynamic websites for effective business functioning.

Icreon is an offshore software development India company. Contact Icreon for PHP Development India.

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