Attributes of the Cloud Computing.

Attributes of the cloud :

There are differing views on the number and description of the cloud’s key  attributes. For this Information Security Briefing, the cloud is defined by a minimum of three attributes: 

1. Hardware management is highly abstracted; 
2. Infrastructure costs are incurred as variable (operating) expense; 
3. Infrastructure capacity is elastic (i.e. it can be scaled up or down).

Alternative views of the cloud’s key attribute

There are alternative definitions of the cloud’s key attributes.   

1. On demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities such as server time and network storage, as needed without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider. 
2. Ubiquitous network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms such as mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs.
3. Location independent resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines. 
4. Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly  up, and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time. 
5. Pay per use. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimisation of resource use. Examples are: measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed, and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organisation accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.