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Top1. Introduction
Cloud computing provides cost-effective computing resources usually with more reliable performance by sharing a large amount of resources with many users who consume the resources at different times (R. K. Gupta & Pateriya, 2017). Cloud computing delivers different types of services typically data storage and computing power services over the internet without direct active management of the hardware equipment by the users (Afzal & Kavitha, 2019). It is mainly used for sharing computing resources in order to accomplish coherence and economy of scale (Hicham, Said, Touhafi, & Ezzati, 2018). Cloud computing shows five major characteristics, including resource pooling, self-service on demand, rapid elasticity, wide access to network, and measured service. The usefulness of cloud includes scalability, reliability, low cost, flexibility and its availability, and has also been commonly used in the industry. (Vella, Yang, Anwar, & Jin, 2018). A general architecture of the cloud computing is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
General Cloud Architecture
The services of the cloud can be grouped into Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to clients via Internet (Belalem & Limam, 2011). SaaS provides the software applications as services to the clients via Internet on a remote basis. It offers cloud-based software which is hosted online by an organization and is available for payment purpose via Internet. This type of service is easy to use and manage, as it is not required to be downloaded and installed on individual devices. SaaS may have some issues such as security, interoperability and lack of integration if the applications are not developed with open standards (Chou, 2019). PaaS provides the facility to develop and distribute personalized applications in a hosted environment via web to the clients. It provides services to the developers with a framework to build upon custom applications. In PaaS model, data resides in vendor-controlled cloud server poses security risks and concerns. IaaS allows the clients to utilize the hardware and resources remotely on a “pay-as-per-use” model. These services can replace most of the local solutions with improved performance. It facilitates individuals or organizations to build and manage their hardware or software resources as they grow and pay only for the resources that they have consumed. In IaaS environment, the organization or company is not having any control over cloud security and is only responsible for any upgrades and maintenance of software (Jyoti, Shrimali, Tiwari, & Singh, 2020).