Characteristics of The Cloud Computing Environment
There are many distinctive characteristics of the cloud computing environment, from being a way to provide computer applications to users without the need to purchase, install, or support software on their computers, servers, or others; From here, educational institutions tended to take advantage of their applications in the process, such as e-mail, web hosting, learning management systems, and office applications for storing and exchanging documents.
In this direction, a number of educational literature, including [1], indicated in its report issued by the Engineering Unit of the Information and Software Society of the European Communities Committee that the most important characteristics available in cloud computing are:
The most important features available in cloud computing
1. Reliability: Cloud systems provide the guarantee of continuous operation of the system without interruption, ie no data loss.
2. Quality of service: It is the ability of the cloud to perform specific requirements without using external resources or sources to meet those requirements, in the best possible way, as this matter is achieved in the least specified time, in order to ensure that the quality component is met for the cloud user.
3. Availability of services and data: Cloud systems provide a database that ensures the frequent synchronization of data / services and their distribution across different sources to achieve load balancing.
4. Virtualization: It is one of the basic technological features of the computer cloud, as its simple use distances the user from the technological complexities of other servers available over the network, and it also offers other advantages.
5. Ease of use: By hiding the complexity of the infrastructure (including management, configuration, etc.), virtualization can be delivered easier and better than other applications.
6. Infrastructure independence: In principle, virtualization technologies allow for greater compatibility by making the platform available independent.
7. Flexibility and Adaptation: It is the self-ability of the cloud to meet variables in the amount and size of resources of all kinds at the specified time and self-adaptation with those variables. Through exposure to the implementation of the virtual environment, the basic infrastructure is more flexible when changing according to different conditions and requirements.
8. Independence of presence: Services and resources can be accessed independently, so that the user is not bound to be in a specific place to obtain the service.
9. Data management systems: It is an essential aspect especially for cloud computing storage, where data is flexibly distributed across multiple resources implicitly. Also, the volume of data may change at any time, so data management must address the horizontal and vertical aspects of its development.
10. APIs and programming improvements: These are necessary to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud, as they provide those features in a way that allows the user to leave such management to this system.
11. Measuring for any kind of resource and service consumption is essential in order to offer flexible pricing, so this is a precondition for flexibility for services provided in cloud computing.
12. Tools: They generally have the necessary tools to support development, adaptation and maximum utilization of the services provided via cloud computing.
13. Cost Reduction: Clouds provide an adaptive factor to changing consumer behavior and reduce infrastructure maintenance costs.
14. Pay as you go: Pull systems provide the ability to base costs on actual consumption of resources, so specific requirements can be defined to be met by the system.
15. Improving shopping time: Withdrawal systems support shopping services at all times, as their infrastructure can be supported to provide that line of services.
From the foregoing, the distinctive characteristics of cloud computing are evident in the reduction of material cost, improvement of applied services, flexibility of data distribution through its management systems, ease of use and independence, in addition to the quality of service and non-loss of data stored on the network within the framework of the theoretical and philosophical foundations that allow the use of its applications in the educational process to achieve its goals.