One of the dynamic and emerging technologies is cloud computing, which provides a supporting spectrum for applications, especially in the education sector. The increasing use of this versatile technology is due to its low cost, resource pooling, and rapid elasticity features. These amazing features act as an innovative driver of success for the organization. The deployment of cloud is done in various applications of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) applications, supply chain management applications (SCM), medical applications, education sector, and mobile applications. But the two major challenge for the successful deployment of the cloud is the trust of the customer and the secure network of the cloud for the integrity of the customer data. This chapter tries to explore the various concepts of cloud computing technology from technical and service point-of-view. Various opportunities using cloud computing are underlined. Along with that, the emphasis is on the major two challenges of cloud computing in terms of trust and security
TopIntroduction
With the advent of technology, Cloud Computing proved itself as a success to reduce the computational cost, to improve application hosting and delivery of content. It is a practical approach which transforms the data center to a highly reliable and effective network. Forrester defines cloud computing as: “A pool of abstracted, highly scalable, and managed to compute infrastructure capable of hosting end-customer applications and billed by consumption.”
Apart from various benefits of Cloud computing technology, there are various challenges of cloud computing technology. Among them, the trust of the customer in the cloud environment and the secure network are the two major challenges.
The previous studies emphasized on the challenges faced by lack of trust and security. But no study till now identify the affect of trust and security factors on the behaviour intention of the student to adopt the cloud computing concept in his learning process and hence the research gap exits (Al-Shargabi et al, 2020; Aljawarneh, 2012; Aljawarneh et al, 2017; Chehbi-Gamoura et al, 2018; Esposito et al, 2018; Jaswal et al, 2019; Kalpana et al, 2018; Lizcano et al, 2020; Malhotra et al, 2019; Mohammed et al, 2019; Mouchili et al, 2018; Singh,2011).
TopCloud Computing Models
Three categories of cloud models are specified as:
- 1.
Software as a Service (SaaS): Highly scalable internet-based applications which provide services to the users. Examples are Google, Salesforce, Microsoft.
- 2.
Platform as a Service (Paas): a platform which provides the facility to design, develop and build the application. Examples are the Azure Service platform, force.com.
- 3.
Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas): IaaS provides basic storage and computing capabilities as standardized services over the network. Examples are Amazon web services, Go Grid.
TopCloud Deployment Models
- •
Public Cloud: The most popular deployment model is Public Cloud. This service is meant for everyone and is usually free of cost.
- •
Private Cloud: The other routinely deployment model is Private Clouds. A Private Cloud is best suited where the data and customer is concerned with a certain level of security and normally used in an organization.
- •
Hybrid Cloud: The Hybrid Cloud came out after the merging of Private and Public Cloud or combination of different clouds. Hybrid cloud setup is mostly used for large organizations. Sensitive and Crucial data is usually preferred hosted in a Private Cloud.
- •
Community Cloud: This cloud is between people who have the same concerns like security, application types and performance demands or between the people having the same interest or same community.
TopCharacteristics Of Cloud
Cloud technology is the fast-growing technology which is proving itself in all fields due to its amazing features. These are:
- •
On-demand capabilities
- •
Rapid elasticity
- •
Measured service
- •
Resource pooling
- •
Broad network access