Cloud computing: Need, enabling technology, architecture, advantages and challenges

Commercially popularized with the year 2002 with the launch of Amazon web services cloud computing has changed the way IT services and resources are delivered to the customers. With its varied platforms like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS it has made available resources which was once never available on demand and scalable manner. With the advantages of high scalability and flexibility, excellent reliability and availability and with no upfront cost in procuring and managing IT infrastructure, it is widely adopted by organizations. This paper is aimed at covering cloud computing from overall perspective. It cover basics of Cloud computing, the service and deployment models used today, the components of cloud computing, the need and working of cloud computing, cloud computing reference model, enabling technologies, challenges and advantages of cloud computing.