Unfolding the Distributed Computing Paradigms

Distributed computing combines multiple computers, geographically dispersed in a cost effective way and presents a single unified resource to the end user with huge storage and computational power. In the past few years, many overlying concepts of distributed computing eminently Cluster, Grid and Cloud Computing have appeared. This paper attempts to unfold these concepts and discusses their close alliance with other forms of computing like Service and Utility Computing. A qualitative comparison between these paradigms has been done. The key impediments to the successful adoption of Cloud Computing have been identified and directions for the future have been in-sighted.