Discuss the five essential characteristics of cloud computing.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The essential characteristics are:
? On-demand self-service: consumers can obtain, configure and deploy cloud services
themselves using cloud service catalogues, without requiring the assistance of anyone
from the cloud provider.
? Broad network access: it is network based, and accessible from anywhere, from any
standardized platform (e.g. desktop computers, laptops, mobile devices).
? Resource pooling. The cloud provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple
consumers, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and
reassigned according to consumer demand. Examples of resources include storage,
processing, memory, and network bandwidth.
? Rapid elasticity. Resource pooling avoids the capital expenditure required for the
establishment of network and computing infrastructure. By outsourcing to a cloud,
consumers can cater for the spikes in demand for their services by using the cloud
provider’s computing capacity and the risk of outages and service interruptions are
significantly reduced. Moreover, capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released,
in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly based on demand. To the consumer, the
capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be called on in
any quantity at any time.
? Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by
leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of
service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage
can be monitored, controlled, and charged for.