The Cloud Computing Resource

Cloud computing is Internet- ("cloud-") based development and use of computer technology ("computing"). In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.Distinguishing Cloud Computing from Utility Computing It typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.Gartner Say...

Grid computing (or the use of computational grids) is the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains applied to a common task, usually to a scientific, technical or business problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or the need to process large amounts of data.

One of the main strategies of grid computing is using software to divide and apportion pieces of a program among several computers, sometimes up to many thousands. Grid computing is distributed, large-scale cluster computing, as well as a form of network-distributed parallel processing Fran Berman, Geoffrey Fox, Anthony J.G. Hey, Grid Computing: Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Wiley, 2008.. The size of grid computing may vary from being small ? confined to a network of computer workstations within a corporation, for example ? to being large, public collaboration across many companies and networks. "The notion of a confined grid may also be known as an intra-nodes cooperation whilst the notion of a larger, wider grid may thus refer to an inter-nodes cooperation".http://diuf.unifr.ch/pai/wiki/doku.php?id=Publications&page=publication&kind=single&ID=276 This inter-/intra-nodes cooperation "across cyber-based collaborative organizations are also known as Virtual Organizations".https://igi-pub.com/reference/details.asp?ID=34273&v=preface

It is a form of distributed 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. This technology has been applied to computationally intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems through volunteer computing, and it is used in commercial enterprises for such diverse applications as drug discovery, economic forecasting, seismic analysis, and back-office data processing in support of e-commerce and Web services.

What distinguishes grid computing from conventional cluster computing systems is that grids tend to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed. Also, while a computing grid may be dedicated to a specialized application, it is often constructed with the aid of general-purpose grid software libraries and middleware.

Utility computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility (such as electricity, water, natural gas, or telephone network). This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire hardware; instead, computational resources are essentially rented. Customers with very large computations or a sudden peak in demand can also avoid the delays that would result from physically acquiring and assembling a large number of computers.

Conventional Internet hosting services have the capability to quickly arrange for the rental of individual servers, for example to provision a bank of web servers to accommodate a sudden surge in traffic to a web site.

"Utility computing" has usually envisioned some form of virtualization so that the amount of storage or computing power available is considerably larger than that of a single time-sharing computer. Multiple servers are used on the "back end" to make this possible. These might be a dedicated computer cluster specifically built for the purpose of being rented out, or even an under-utilized supercomputer. The technique of running a single calculation on multiple computers is known as distributed computing.

The term "grid computing" is often used to describe a particular form of distributed computing, where the supporting nodes are geographically distributed or cross administrative domains. To provide utility computing services, a company can "bundle" the resources of members of the public for sale, who might be paid with a portion of the revenue from clients.

One model, common among volunteer computing applications, is for a central server to dispense tasks to participating nodes, on the behest of approved end-users (in the commercial case, the paying customers). Another model, sometimes called the Virtual Organization (VO), is more decentralized, with organizations buying and selling computing resources as needed or as they go idle.

The definition of "utility computing" is sometimes extended to specialized tasks, such as web services.