Trustworthy Cloud Computing (eBook)

Vladimir O. Safonov (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-119-11391-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Introduces the topic of cloud computing with an emphasis on the trustworthiness of cloud computing systems and services

This book describes the scientific basis of cloud computing, explaining the ideas, principles, and architectures of cloud computing as well the different types of clouds and the services they provide. The text reviews several cloud computing platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Oracle, Google, HP, IBM, Salesforce, and Kaavo. The author addresses the problem of trustworthiness in cloud computing and provides methods to improve the security and privacy of cloud applications. The end-of-chapter exercises and supplementary material on the book's companion website will allow readers to grasp the introductory and advanced level concepts of cloud computing.

• Examines cloud computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Oracle, Google, HP, IBM, Salesforce, and Kaavo
• Analyzes the use of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) for refactoring cloud services and improving the security and privacy of cloud applications
• Contains practical examples of cloud computing, test questions, and end-of-chapter exercises
• Includes presentations, examples of cloud projects and other teaching resources at the author's website (http://www.vladimirsafonov.org/cloud)

 Trustworthy Cloud Computing is written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science, data science, and computer engineering as well as software engineers, system architects, system managers, and software developers new to cloud computing.

Autor

Vladimir O. Safonov is the Professor of Computer Science and head of the laboratory of Java Technology at St. Petersburg University. He is a leading specialist in computer science and software engineering in Russia. Professor Safonov holds four U.S. software patents, four Russian software patents, and has published 190 papers and 17 books. An IEEE Senior Member, Professor Safonov has led the IEEE Region 8 Russia North-West Computer Society/Engineering Management Society Joint Chapter since 2003.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION

To get better acquainted with the subject of the book, let us first understand what the key ideas and motivations of cloud computing are, why it is so attractive, popular, prospective, hot, and fashionable worldwide, what are the issues of the cloud approach and directions of its future development, and what kind of interest and activity relative to cloud computing different categories of people demonstrate right now.

THE CLOUD AS AN INNOVATIVE CHANGE OF COMPUTING PARADIGM

The metaphor of the cloud, depicting a symbol of the Internet or any other network, appeared long ago, probably in the 1960s when the first networks appeared. However, a picture of the cloud itself is not enough to explain the key ideas of cloud computing. To understand the motivation and the essence of cloud computing better, let us consider how the viewpoint on using computers to make computations or to get access to some data has changed over the years. The key questions are as follows: what is the best way to use computer services, what is required from the user (client) to do that, and what is the center of the computation in different approaches to it?

In the 1950s, computers were isolated “monsters,” each occupying a large hall, requiring huge amounts of electric power, water, or air cooling, a brigade of people taking care of the computer hardware and software, and serving as intermediary between the computer and its users. The only way to use a computer was to get full personal access to it for some time, to solve just a single task at each moment; the interfaces between the computer and the user were very poor, such as punched cards or punched tapes as program and data input media and engineering control panels where the content of the computer memory was displayed by hundreds of LEDs, each depicting a bit of information. No networking was used to connect computers and their users to each other.

In the 1960s, the first operating systems appeared, which allowed the users to share the computer resources – CPU, memory, input/output devices – between several users and several tasks. Also, in the late 1960s, the first computer networks appeared, such as ARPANET. Such innovations allowed the clients to use computing resources in the shared mode, and, even more important, to use networking to transfer information from one computer to the other.

In the 1970s, networking technologies, hardware, and protocols developed rapidly. The number of computers connected to networks increased, from several dozens in the 1960s to several thousands in the 1970s. Ethernet and TCP/IP protocols were developed as the basis for the future worldwide network – the Internet whose birth goes back to the early 1980s.

So the computing paradigm has changed from the isolated use of a single computer to solve a single task to the use of the client computer resources, along with the other computing resources available via some network, to solve a set of everyday tasks. It became possible to avoid keeping all computing resources on the client computer. However, much effort was still required from the clients, related to many extra software and/or hardware installations and settings. Even in order to use a set of office applications needed every day for creating, printing, and exchanging documents, such as Microsoft Office, this set of applications needed to get installed on the client computer, which required extra disk space of the client computer and extra working time of the computer user.

THE BASIC IDEA OF THE CLOUD AND ITS ADVANTAGES

Developers and users of computing technologies, over several decades, have come a long way from local computations on isolated machines to the use of local area, regional area, and global area networking and, finally, to the clouds – full virtualization of resources based on the only “window to the world” of computations – a Web browser through which all the cloud resources are available.

The basic idea of cloud computing is as follows: to help the client to avoid any extra installations on his or her computer and to consume a ready-to-use structured set of virtualized computing Web services, both software and data (“the cloud”), via Web browser, without any extra requirements to cloud client computers. Only a computer with an operating system, a Web browser, and access to the Internet are necessary from any client to use the power of cloud computing.

Speaking in more general terms, cloud computing is now a more and more popular innovative approach to virtualization of computing resources, platforms, and infrastructures based on using via the Web a set of powerful computers, and a huge amount of software and databases stored on the computers of the cloud provider's datacenters.

This approach is really innovative, since it radically changes the viewpoint of the software developer on the use of resources. Instead of the time-consuming and effort-consuming approaches of the past, such as, “I'll install these and that programs and data on my computer and will solve this task (the installation may require several days, and a serious upgrade or even a replacement of the computer could be required),” we can now use the modern cloud approach: “I'll subscribe to the cloud services of the XXX company for six months and will solve with the help of cloud resources all my necessary problems, using the cloud when and where it will be comfortable for me, communicating to the cloud from my smartphone or from my laptop.”

Please feel the difference between the above two approaches. Due to the use of the cloud, the user is freed from routine and mundane work and switches to creative activity. When the user becomes the author of useful software cloud applications, he or she will be able to use the cloud for publishing his or her own software.

So the metaphor of the cloud, with cloud computing, now acquires a new sense. Before the cloud era, the center of organizing computations was a client computer or, in some cases, a local area network. The Internet was used just as a source of useful information or useful software applications that should be downloaded from the Internet and installed on the client computer. Now, with cloud computing, the cloud (part of the Internet) becomes itself a powerful tool of organizing and performing computations, and the client computer (via a Web browser) is used as a tool to control the computations and to visualize the results.

The advantages of such approach are obvious: the set of computing resources, referred to as the cloud, can be implemented on powerful server computers located in the datacenters without the clients' participation, and the only thing the cloud clients should do is to consume cloud services via the Web, using their browsers and any kind of computing devices, from desktop or laptop computers to mobile devices such as smartphones, to solve their everyday tasks using the cloud. No installations on client computers and no extra client resources are required.

So, looking from the client side, cloud computing provides just unlimited opportunities. Any client, a specialist in any problem domain (e.g., a doctor, a scientist, or a teacher), can use the cloud in his or her everyday activity, due to the cloud's Web interface being available for use either from a mobile device or from a laptop computer – this is all that is needed from the client. So the following prospective picture of the near future can be imagined: all computing resources are structured and available from the clouds, and everybody is using the appropriate cloud in their everyday activity.

This approach to computing is radically different from the previous ones used in the history of IT: no need to carry a computing center with you every day, no need to learn and perform subtle networking settings typical of client operating systems – just a smartphone and access to the cloud are enough to get all necessary computing resources.

Thus, two very important principles are being implemented, due to cloud computing: pervasive use of computers in everyday activity and user-centric computing. The latter principle means that a comfortable working environment is implemented for any user to work in the cloud, the same working environment, irrespective of the kind of computing device the client is using. More traditional approaches to computing actually require the user to be part of the existing computer system he or she uses and perform specific settings to be able to work under proper conditions. Speaking in a straightforward manner, cloud computing enables the principle of computer for the user, rather than the user for the computer.

ISSUES OF THE CLOUD APPROACH AND OF ITS LEARNING

No matter how attractive the cloud approach is, a number of initial questions arise in a moment when you realize the idea of the cloud. Question number one is security and reliability of the cloud, that is, cloud computing trustworthiness. Please note that it closely relates to the title and the motto of my book. Not only software cloud services are located on server computers in the datacenters implementing the cloud but any kind of the client data (including confidential information) has to be also stored in the cloud. The question arises as to how secure it is. Is there any guarantee that the client's private data will not be somehow stolen from the cloud datacenter computers? Storing private data on a private computer, intuitively, looks more secure. But this intuition is wrong: now...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.1.2016
• Reihe/Serie: IEEE Press
• Reihe/Serie: Wiley - IEEE
• Reihe/Serie: Wiley - IEEE
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Netzwerke
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Theorie / Studium
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• Schlagworte: abstraction layer • account/service hijacking • Amazon AWS Cloud • availability of service • Cloud Computing • Cloud Portal • Computer Engineering • Computer Science • Computertechnik • Content Delivery Network (CDN) • CSR lock-in • data loss • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) • Electrical & Electronics Engineering • Elektrotechnik u. Elektronik • Google Cloud Platform • Grid & Cloud Computing • Grid- u. Cloud-Computing • HP Helion Cloud • hypervisor • IBM Bluemix Cloud • Informatik • Intercloud • Kaavo Cloud • Layer • Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack • Microsoft Azure cloud platform • Middleware • multi-tiered architecture • Oracle Cloud • Rich Client • Salesforce Cloud • Server • Service-Oriented Architecture • session riding • software architecture • Software engineering • Software-Engineering • Thin Client • Tier • trustworthy computing • virtual machine escape
• ISBN-10: 1-119-11391-1 / 1119113911
• ISBN-13: 978-1-119-11391-1 / 9781119113911