An Analysis on the Terms and Conditions of the Clickwrap Agreement and the Benefits of Maintaining the Click Wrap Agreement in Cloud Computing

One of the most unique forms of contracting is apparent in cloud computing. Cloud computing, unlike other conventional methods, has adopted a different approach in the formation of binding contract that will be used for the governance of the cloud. This method is namely the clickwrap agreement. Click wrap agreement follows a take it or leave it basis in which the end users are provided with limited to no option in terms of having a say on the contract that binds them during the use of cloud services. The terms found in the contract are often cloud service provider friendly and will be less favourable to the end user. In this article, the authors examine the terms that are often found in the cloud computing agreement as well as study the benefit that is entailed in adopting this contracting method. This chapter has undertaken a qualitative study that comprises interviews of cloud service providers in Malaysia. Hence, this study is a novel approach that also provides insight in terms of the cloud service provider perspective regarding the click wrap agreement.

Makespan Optimisation in Cloudlet Scheduling with Improved DQN Algorithm in Cloud Computing

Despite increased cloud service providers following advanced cloud infrastructure management, substantial execution time is lost due to minimal server usage. Given the importance of reducing total execution time (makespan) for cloud service providers (as a vital metric) during sustaining Quality-of-Service (QoS), this study established an enhanced scheduling algorithm for minimal cloudlet scheduling (CS) makespan with the deep Q-network (DQN) algorithm under MCS-DQN. A novel reward function was recommended to enhance the DQN model convergence. Additionally, an open-source simulator (CloudSim) was employed to assess the suggested work performance. Resultantly, the recommended MCS-DQN scheduler revealed optimal outcomes to minimise the makespan metric and other counterparts (task waiting period, resource usage of virtual machines, and the extent of incongruence against the algorithms).

Next-Generation Blockchain-Enabled Virtualized Cloud Security Solutions: Review and Open Challenges

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective IT solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from the grid and parallel computing models. It uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better IT solutions for large-scale computational data centres. It encompasses different services for supporting data storage, networking, and computing for facilities and amenities for businesses and multinational corporations. The enormous elastic on-demand cloud provisioning resources and services and datasets are processed and stored in tier-level virtualized cloud data centres operated by third-party service providers called cloud owners. The primary issue with these cloud service providers is to provide and maintain data security, privacy, and confidentiality and service availability and data support for end-users. This paper reviews, highlights, and discusses some of the common cloud computing vulnerabilities primarily related to virtualization platforms and their implementations while outsourcing services and resources to different end-users and business enterprises. We then provided blockchain-enabled solutions for virtualized cloud platforms involving both the end-users and cloud service providers (CSP) to address and solve various security and privacy-related vulnerabilities. These solutions will help the data centre industry to improve its virtualized cloud services and resource provisioning facilities. Finally, we discussed different blockchain-related implementation challenges in cloud infrastructures.

A Novel Architectural Model for Dynamic Updating and Verification of Data Storage in Cloud Environment

Cloud computing is a quickly emerging computing model in the IT industry. Due to the rapid increase in technology, many clients want to store multiple copies of the same data in multiple data centers. Clients are outsourcing the data to cloud service providers and enjoying the high quality of service. Cloud service providers (CSP) are going to charge extra amounts for storing multiple copies; CSP must provide the firm guarantee for storing multiple copies. This paper proposes a new system model for storing and verifying multiple copies; this model deals with identifying tarnished copies which are transparent for the clients. Also, it deals with dynamic data control in the cloud with optimal results.

An integrated three-tier trust management framework in mobile edge computing using fuzzy logic

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is introduced as part of edge computing paradigm, that exploit cloud computing resources, at a nearer premises to service users. Cloud service users often search for cloud service providers to meet their computational demands. Due to the lack of previous experience between cloud service providers and users, users hold several doubts related to their data security and privacy, job completion and processing performance efficiency of service providers. This paper presents an integrated three-tier trust management framework that evaluates cloud service providers in three main domains: Tier I, which evaluates service provider compliance to the agreed upon service level agreement; Tier II, which computes the processing performance of a service provider based on its number of successful processes; and Tier III, which measures the violations committed by a service provider, per computational interval, during its processing in the MEC network. The three-tier evaluation is performed during Phase I computation. In Phase II, a service provider total trust value and status are gained through the integration of the three tiers using the developed overall trust fuzzy inference system (FIS). The simulation results of Phase I show the service provider trust value in terms of service level agreement compliance, processing performance and measurement of violations independently. This disseminates service provider’s points of failure, which enables a service provider to enhance its future performance for the evaluated domains. The Phase II results show the overall trust value and status per service provider after integrating the three tiers using overall trust FIS. The proposed model is distinguished among other models by evaluating different parameters for a service provider.

A Review of Evolutionary Trends in Cloud Computing and Applications to the Healthcare Ecosystem

Cloud computing is a technology that allows dynamic and flexible computing capability and storage through on-demand delivery and pay-as-you-go services over the Internet. This technology has brought significant advances in the Information Technology (IT) domain. In the last few years, the evolution of cloud computing has led to the development of new technologies such as cloud federation, edge computing, and fog computing. However, with the development of Internet of Things (IoT), several challenges have emerged with these new technologies. Therefore, this paper discusses each of the emerging cloud-based technologies, as well as their architectures, opportunities, and challenges. We present how cloud computing evolved from one paradigm to another through the interplay of benefits such as improvement in computational resources through the combination of the strengths of various Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), decrease in latency, improvement in bandwidth, and so on. Furthermore, the paper highlights the application of different cloud paradigms in the healthcare ecosystem.