The Importance Of Social Cloud Computing

In the internet world, communities are growing larger, and the number of sophisticated users is increasing rapidly; each user adheres to a different kind of new innovations. Thus, the idea of creating an e-community has surfaced in order to address the gap in needs, which brings us to a suitable environment for business and investments. Users are now better able to transfer media in whichever form it may come, e.g. images, documents, audio and video; and the user is now better able to purchase or sell goods, amongst other daily matters. Thus, a competition has arisen for the provision of different kinds of services to address the community’s needs; whether it maybe a private or a public community. That is the challenge today and for many years

Similarly to web-based social networking, mobile social networking occurs in virtual communities. For example, social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have all launched their own mobile apps to give their users instant and real-time access from their mobile device. However, please note that mobile social networking is only listed here, and it will not be further explored in later stages of this research.

3.2. What is Social Cloud Computing?

There are many definitions for Social Cloud Computing, which is a scalable computing model in which virtual resources contributed by users are dynamically shared amongst a group of friends. In one (10) definition, this is defined as a framework that enables the sharing of resources and services through the utilization of already established relationships amongst the members of a given social network.

Such definitions refer to the particular notion of a social-based service provision, whereby members of a social network would be able to publicize their computing resources, creating a cloud service model above the social network website

Classification Model Supports Cloud Servicers (CMSCS)

This model is designed by(13), and it was built on over 52 studies on cloud services characteristics. It concludes that the main attributes of cloud services are Flexibility, Costs, Security and Privacy, Performance, Reliability, and Cloud service management(13) as shown in figure 2 and table 2 below on the characteristics/sub-characteristics of CMSCS.

Those features serve as strategic objectives regarding Cloud Computing and provide a structure for Cloud service characteristics. Figure 2 CMSCS characteristic model

Characteristic Sub-characteristic

Flexibility Allocating/De-allocating Time, Provisioning, Change/Update, Resources Scalability

Cost Pricing Options, Payment Methods, Price Resilience and Transparency

Reliability Trustworthiness, SLA Availability, Recovery Datacenter/Network

Security & privacy Datacenter Security, Data Protection Compliance, Network Security

Scope & performance Virtualization, Latency, Instance Type/Capacity, Load Balancing

Service & cloud Management Support, Service Operations, Web Portal, Usability

Table 2 Main & sub characteristic attributes for CMSCS