Cloud Computing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Cloud Computing - Research Paper Example Cloud computing can involve the use of web applications, mobile applications, data centers and other virtual services. This form of online computing emerged around the year 1960 with the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Network (Mohamed, 2009). Today, cloud computing is being adopted in major businesses and organizations as a way of increasing efficiency and reducing operational costs. Cloud computing has three main models of application. The first model, Software as a Service (SaaS), entails the use of software applications provided by a SaaS provider (Sridhar, 2009). In this model, a client obtains access to the software applications through the use of a web browser. Another model is Platform as a Service  (PaaS). This involves the provision of a platform on which the client can create and deploy their own applications. The last approach is Infrastructure as a Service  (IaaS). In this model, the client is only provided with the physical computing resources and they create their own platform and applications. Businesses and organizations can benefit from cloud computing in several ways. Use of cloud computing services translates to reduced operational costs, since hardware or software resources or both are acquired by the service provider depending on the cloud computing model in use. In addition to this, other services such as backup and recovery plans, security implementations and hardware maintenance routines are taken care of by the service provider. A business that relies on a cloud computing approach therefore saves on the time and funds that would have been used in the accomplishment of these services. Security is a major concern in cloud computing. Cloud computing is vulnerable to malware injection attacks in which a hacker creates a malicious service implementation module or virtual system instance and tricks the cloud system into trusting it as a genuine module (Jensen, 2009). Denial of