Cloud Computing and Databases: A Research Paper on the Current Trends and Technologies

1. WHY CLOUD COMPUTING

According to [1], the world's information is doubling every two years, creating a staggering 1.8 Zetabytes of data by the end of 2011. More than 70 percent of all server worldwide would be virtualized by 2014. Current data will grow by 800% over the next five years. 70 percent of the companies in the world will have to modify their data centers in order to meet the increased power and cooling requirements. There are 33 million services worldwide, and 15 percent of them run 24/7 without being in active use. Because of these exponential increases in information, utilization of markets through technology and the rapid changes during development, demands for information technology systems have heightened dramatically. As a result, data worldwide become unstructured and would require more effort than usual for them to be understood and analyzed. Moreover, different data centers will also have to be remodeled to cope with these changes. To solve this issue, IT practitioners developed a technology which they call cloud computing.

[2] defined cloud computing as, "a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services, that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Some issues which can be resolved through cloud computing includes poor utilization of resources leading to an increase in cost, resizing of load to support application needs, and reallocating these loads to suit application demands. Because of this, cloud computing turned out to be an increasingly attractive means of creating and delivering IT services throughout the entire life cycle.

2. SOME KEY CONCEPTS IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing is made up of other concepts in computer science. Likewise, the cloud model is composed of several essential characteristics, service models and deployment models.

2.1 Virtualization

One key concept in cloud computing is virtualization. [3] defined virtualization as an emerging IT paradigm that separates computing functions and technology implementations from physical hardware. It involves a shift in thinking from physical to logical, meaning IT resources are treated as logical resources rather than separate physical resources. With virtualization, one can consolidate processors, memory, storage and networks onto a virtual environment. Additionally, one physical resource can be made to look into multiple virtual resources. These resources can also have functions or features that are not available in any underlying physical resources. Cloud computing, as an example, is the virtualization of computer programs through an internet connection rather than installing applications on every