Cloud Computing in Academia, Governments, and Industry

Abstract

Cloud Computing is gaining a considerable attention in the past few years, where hardware and software are provided on-demand as a service through internet following the simple pay-as-you-go financial model. Using such powerful technology, several projects, in different areas, have been built like supporting academic and scientific researches, providing governmental services, and developing business applications. Unfortunately, the previous works and ongoing researches in these areas are scattered among the literature, on the internet, and from research groups, which makes it hard for researchers to be involved in such vast wave of researches. This chapter carefully reviews the emergence of the Cloud in all of the above mentioned areas through a wide range of well classified researches, projects, and applications that have been either innovated or improved due to the Cloud disclosure. Moreover, the chapter comparatively discusses the previous work done in these fields and explores the opened research points.