Cloud computing Research challenges

Prerequisite – Virtualization In Cloud Computing and Types

Figure – Major cloud computing research challenges

There are 10 major cloud computing research challenges which are described below-

1. Portability –
   Portability is the ability to move application and its data from one place to another. It could be achieved by restricting dependencies on the underlying atmosphere. A portable component (application, data) could be moved and reprocessed irrespective of the provider, platform, operating system, location, storage etc. e.g., if the old cloud environment is Windows and new cloud environment is Linux then an application running on old cloud would be able to run on new cloud without being changed is called portability.
2. Development of new architecture –
   Currently, almost all of the cloud computing services are employed in huge commercial data centers and they are functioned in old centralized manner. This approach of designing has its benefits, i.e., Economy of scale and high manageability, yet it has some limitations. Most of the researchers are inclined towards using intended resources to host cloud applications. This model of cloud computing in which using voluntary resources, or a mixture of both dedicated and voluntary resources are very reasonable and it suits such applications as scientific computing. However, regardless of its advantages, yet this architecture has open research challenges as well, which are heterogeneous resources management, incentive scheme for such architecture.
3. Limited scale-ability –
   Cloud computing service providers promise to deliver infinite scale-ability for customer but due to the fact that millions of users are now migrating to cloud computing so such promise is not fulfilled. The challenge of availability and scale-ability presents another research area for the researcher to find an optimum solution for these problems.
4. Lack of standards –
   Each cloud services provider has their own standards and no comparative performance measurement facility is enabled to the user by which he can compare standards and performance of unlike clouds using some cost per service metric. It is still needed that cloud computing should be standardized.
5. Security of privacy –
   The main obstacle in the fast adoption of cloud is the security apprehensions of the customers. While due to the availability of modern techniques of security the probabilities of security flaws are reduced but still, when worms and hackers attack a system, disorder is created within a few hours. It is essential that the applications and architectures should be private and the mechanism of security must be relevant, evolving and adoptive. Trust and Privacy are some other possible areas of research in cloud computing.
6. Reliability –
   When it comes to availability of connection to cloud network then again it becomes an issue. End user is not sure if he will remain connected to cloud network and will continue his work at any time as connection is lost. The connections to cloud services are secure or not and the movement of data to cloud computing is in safe environment and as per needed speed or not. Cloud itself is reliable enough to be migrated to? So, reliability is another challenge.
7. Governance –
   Many administrations started providing cloud services using their own data centers, thus trying to govern and bring authority in cloud computing. Governments, organizations and users must need to work together to resolve this issue.
8. Metering –
   Administrations using cloud services must meter and monitor the performance of services. Services providers must provide means to measure and monitor their services across standard parameters.
9. Energy management –
   The prerequisite of the cloud computing is the management of varied resources across a distributed computing environment. By the user’s perspective all these resources are ? “on all the times”. If this is the case, then, it is highly unproductive in terms of the requirement for the energy consumption. A lot of research has been carried out in developing energy efficient equipment and utilize this equipment in building data centers to be energy efficient.
10. Denial of service –
    Another trending issue and a challenge that is faced by the researchers is the denial of service (DoS) in cloud computing. As a matter of fact, cloud provides the allocation of resources dynamically, so what will be the response of the cloud when it is under a heavy denial of service attack? Is it necessary to build a Denial of Service protection into cloud, or it will be handled on the internet level as it is dealt now? This also poses another challenge for the researcher.