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Different Definitions Of Cloud Computing

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Many definitions of cloud computing exist. In our case, we will use the definition of cloud computing given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST 2011), which seems to cover a good range of characteristics of cloud computing and is well accepted on the whole. “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.” 1. Cloud architecture The NIST gives an overview of the cloud computing reference architecture on Figure 2 (Mell 2012). Figure 1: NIST cloud computing reference architecture. From this diagram, we can identify five main actors (a person or an organization) of cloud: the consumer, the auditor, the provider, the broker, and the carrier. The figure also defines the functions of the actors. For instance, the cloud consumer is the person or the organization that will use the cloud service from the cloud provider. Each actor will, at a certain point, interact with the other cloud actors. 2. Cloud characteristics As shown in Figure 1, the NIST defines the five essential characteristics mentioned in the definition as followed (NIST 2011): On-demand self-service. A consumer

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