Cloud Computing Technologies

Cloud Entities

In general, basically three entities are involved under the concept of cloud computing environment as shown in figure 1-

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  Owner: Owner is the entity who has some data or services which is required by the user. Owner will store all the data and services on the cloud from where any user can access them. Owner also decides the access criteria and type of access such as: read, write or update to the user on data, resources or services. After deciding the access, the access criteria owner is free from any data handling tasks such as- its storage, maintenance, transformation etc. As all these tasks are further handles by the CSP. Owner make itself free and contact with service provider only when either new update / addition required to the previously stored data or any modification in user access criteria.

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  Cloud Service Provider (CSP): Cloud service provider act as an intermediate layer between the owner and the user. Cloud service provider is that entity who maintains the data and services and setup the security protocols. Cloud service provider allows the authorized user to access their required data and services according to access criteria that is based on the role, capability, access control or authorization, etc. as decided by the owner. This entity plays an important role in entire cloud environment. Both the owner and user can contact this entity regarding their services.

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  User: It is the entity who actually required the data and services and acquired it from the cloud service provider according to their requirement and pay only for the amount of data or resource they used. Users do not have any direct contact with owner, only with CSP after cross verification of access criteria. Only after that users will be able to use its required data or service and pay for only that much data utilized by them.

Figure 1.

Entities in Cloud Computing Environment