Infrastructures for High-Performance Computing: Cloud Computing Development Environments

This article introduces the basic concepts of cloud computing, which provides an abstraction for remote, infinitely scalable provisioning of computation and storage resources. The article provides a definition of cloud computing, describes the main characteristics of cloud systems, and discusses the main service models (Software as a Service, Platforms as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service) and deployment models (Private Cloud; Community Cloud; Public Cloud) adopted by cloud providers. The article also discusses the most important models for the interconnection of clouds (Hybrid Cloud, Cloud Federation, and Inter-cloud).