Showing papers on "Service provider published in 2011"

Value co-creation in service logic: A critical analysis:

Abstract: The underpinning logic of value co-creation in service logic is analysed. It is observed that some of the 10 foundational premises of the so-called service-dominant logic do not fully support an understanding of value creation and co-creation in a way that is meaningful for theoretical development and decision making in business and marketing practice. Without a thorough understanding of the interaction concept, the locus as well as nature and content of value co-creation cannot be identified. Value co-creation easily becomes a concept without substance. Based on the analysis in the present article, it is observed that the unique contribution of a service perspective on business (service logic) is not that customers always are co-creators of value, but rather that under certain circumstances the service provider gets opportunities to co-create value together with its customers. Finally, seven statements included in six of the foundational premises are reformulated accordingly.

Expanding understanding of service exchange and value co-creation: a social construction approach

Abstract: According to service-dominant logic (S-D logic), all providers are service providers, and service is the fundamental basis of exchange. Value is co-created with customers and assessed on the basis of value-in-context. However, the extensive literature on S-D logic could benefit from paying explicit attention to the fact that both service exchange and value co-creation are influenced by social forces. The aim of this study is to expand understanding of service exchange and value co-creation by complementing these central aspects of S-D logic with key concepts from social construction theories (social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions, and reproduction of social structures). The study develops and describes a new framework for understanding how the concepts of service exchange and value co-creation are affected by recognizing that they are embedded in social systems. The study contends that value should be understood as value-in-social-context and that value is a social construction. Value co-creation is shaped by social forces, is reproduced in social structures, and can be asymmetric for the actors involved. Service exchanges are dynamic, and actors learn and change their roles within dynamic service systems.

Hybrid Offerings: How Manufacturing Firms Combine Goods and Services Successfully:

Abstract: This article examines key success factors for designing and delivering combinations of goods and services (i.e., hybrid offerings) in business markets. Goods manufacturers, unlike pure service providers, find themselves in a unique position to grow revenues through hybrid offerings but must learn how to leverage unique resources and build distinctive capabilities. Using case studies and depth interviews with senior executives in manufacturing companies, the authors develop a resource-capability framework as a basis for research and practice. Executives identify four critical resources: (1) product usage and process data derived from the firm's installed base of physical goods, (2) product development and manufacturing assets, (3) an experienced product sales force and distribution network, and (4) a field service organization. In leveraging these specific resources, successful firms build five critical capabilities: (1) service-related data processing and interpretation capability, (2) execution risk assessment and mitigation capability, (3) design-to-service capability, (4) hybrid offering sales capability, and (5) hybrid offering deployment capability. These capabilities influence manufacturers' positional advantage in two directions: differentiation and cost leadership. The authors propose a new typology of industrial services and discuss how resources and capabilities affect success across categories of hybrid offers.

Efficient Autoscaling in the Cloud Using Predictive Models for Workload Forecasting

Abstract: Large-scale component-based enterprise applications that leverage Cloud resources expect Quality of Service(QoS) guarantees in accordance with service level agreements between the customer and service providers. In the context of Cloud computing, auto scaling mechanisms hold the promise of assuring QoS properties to the applications while simultaneously making efficient use of resources and keeping operational costs low for the service providers. Despite the perceived advantages of auto scaling, realizing the full potential of auto scaling is hard due to multiple challenges stemming from the need to precisely estimate resource usage in the face of significant variability in client workload patterns. This paper makes three contributions to overcome the general lack of effective techniques for workload forecasting and optimal resource allocation. First, it discusses the challenges involved in auto scaling in the cloud. Second, it develops a model-predictive algorithm for workload forecasting that is used for resource auto scaling. Finally, empirical results are provided that demonstrate that resources can be allocated and deal located by our algorithm in a way that satisfies both the application QoS while keeping operational costs low.

Multilevel Service Design: From Customer Value Constellation to Service Experience Blueprinting:

Abstract: The proliferation of complex service systems raises new challenges for service design and requires new methods. Multilevel Service Design (MSD) is presented as a new interdisciplinary method for designing complex service systems. MSD synthesizes contributions from new service development, interaction design, and the emerging field of service design. MSD enables integrated development of service offerings at three hierarchical levels: (a) Designing the firm’s service concept with the customer value constellation of service offerings for the value constellation experience; (b) Designing the firm’s service system, comprising its architecture and navigation, for the service experience; and (c) Designing each service encounter with the Service Experience Blueprint for the service encounter experience. Applications of the MSD method are described for designing a new retail grocery service and for redesigning a bank service. MSD contributes an interdisciplinary service design method that accommodates the cocreat...

Seeding Strategies for Viral Marketing: An Empirical Comparison

Abstract: Seeding strategies have strong influences on the success of viral marketing campaigns, but previous studies using computer simulations and analytical models have produced conflicting recommendations about the optimal seeding strategy. This study compares four seeding strategies in two complementary small-scale field experiments, as well as in one real-life viral marketing campaign involving more than 200,000 customers of a mobile phone service provider. The empirical results show that the best seeding strategies can be up to eight times more successful than other seeding strategies. Seeding to well-connected people is the most successful approach because these attractive seeding points are more likely to participate in viral marketing campaigns. This finding contradicts a common assumption in other studies. Well-connected people also actively use their greater reach but do not have more influence on their peers than do less well-connected people.

PubMed and beyond: a survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature.

Abstract: The past decade has witnessed the modern advances of high-throughput technology and rapid growth of research capacity in producing large-scale biological data, both of which were concomitant with an exponential growth of biomedical literature. This wealth of scholarly knowledge is of significant importance for researchers in making scientific discoveries and healthcare professionals in managing health-related matters. However, the acquisition of such information is becoming increasingly difficult due to its large volume and rapid growth. In response, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is continuously making changes to its PubMed Web service for improvement. Meanwhile, different entities have devoted themselves to developing Web tools for helping users quickly and efficiently search and retrieve relevant publications. These practices, together with maturity in the field of text mining, have led to an increase in the number and quality of various Web tools that provide comparable literature search service to PubMed. In this study, we review 28 such tools, highlight their respective innovations, compare them to the PubMed system and one another, and discuss directions for future development. Furthermore, we have built a website dedicated to tracking existing systems and future advances in the field of biomedical literature search. Taken together, our work serves information seekers in choosing tools for their needs and service providers and developers in keeping current in the field. Database URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Lu/search

Relational Cloud: A Database-as-a-Service for the Cloud

Abstract: This paper introduces a new transactional “database-as-a-service” (DBaaS) called Relational Cloud. A DBaaS promises to move much of the operational burden of provisioning, configuration, scaling, performance tuning, backup, privacy, and access control from the database users to the service operator, offering lower overall costs to users. Early DBaaS efforts include Amazon RDS and Microsoft SQL Azure, which are promising in terms of establishing the market need for such a service, but which do not address three important challenges: efficient multi-tenancy, elastic scalability, and database privacy. We argue that these three challenges must be overcome before outsourcing database software and management becomes attractive to many users, and cost-effective for service providers. The key technical features of Relational Cloud include: (1) a workload-aware approach to multi-tenancy that identifies the workloads that can be co-located on a database server, achieving higher consolidation and better performance than existing approaches; (2) the use of a graph-based data partitioning algorithm to achieve near-linear elastic scale-out even for complex transactional workloads; and (3) an adjustable security scheme that enables SQL queries to run over encrypted data, including ordering operations, aggregates, and joins. An underlying theme in the design of the components of Relational Cloud is the notion of workload awareness: by monitoring query patterns and data accesses, the system obtains information useful for various optimization and security functions, reducing the configuration effort for users and operators.

SLA-Based Resource Allocation for Software as a Service Provider (SaaS) in Cloud Computing Environments

Abstract: Cloud computing has been considered as a solution for solving enterprise application distribution and configuration challenges in the traditional software sales model. Migrating from traditional software to Cloud enables on-going revenue for software providers. However, in order to deliver hosted services to customers, SaaS companies have to either maintain their own hardware or rent it from infrastructure providers. This requirement means that SaaS providers will incur extra costs. In order to minimize the cost of resources, it is also important to satisfy a minimum service level to customers. Therefore, this paper proposes resource allocation algorithms for SaaS providers who want to minimize infrastructure cost and SLA violations. Our proposed algorithms are designed in a way to ensure that Saas providers are able to manage the dynamic change of customers, mapping customer requests to infrastructure level parameters and handling heterogeneity of Virtual Machines. We take into account the customers' Quality of Service parameters such as response time, and infrastructure level parameters such as service initiation time. This paper also presents an extensive evaluation study to analyze and demonstrate that our proposed algorithms minimize the SaaS provider's cost and the number of SLA violations in a dynamic resource sharing Cloud environment.

Authentication and authorization methods for cloud computing security

Abstract: An authentication and authorization plug-in model for a cloud computing environment enables cloud customers to retain control over their enterprise information when their applications are deployed in the cloud. The cloud service provider provides a pluggable interface for customer security modules. When a customer deploys an application, the cloud environment administrator allocates a resource group (e.g., processors, storage, and memory) for the customer's application and data. The customer registers its own authentication and authorization security module with the cloud security service, and that security module is then used to control what persons or entities can access information associated with the deployed application. The cloud environment administrator, however, typically is not registered (as a permitted user) within the customer's security module; thus, the cloud environment administrator is not able to access (or release to others, or to the cloud's general resource pool) the resources assigned to the cloud customer (even though the administrator itself assigned those resources) or the associated business information. To further balance the rights of the various parties, a third party notary service protects the privacy and the access right of the customer when its application and information are deployed in the cloud.

Factors Affecting Bloggers' Knowledge Sharing: An Investigation Across Gender

Abstract: Blogs have emerged as an innovative tool for sharing information and knowledge, and they command significant interest from information technology IT users as well as providers. Our study establishes a research framework to provide an understanding of the factors affecting knowledge sharing among bloggers in online social networks. The research results indicate that bloggers' trust, strength of social ties, and reciprocity all have a positive effect on their knowledge-sharing behavior. Further, the impact of each factor on such behavior varies by gender. Our results provide evidence that offline expected social norms tend to persist in the online blogosphere and that gender differences need to be considered as a significant factor in understanding the IT usage behavior in the context of social capital theory. For IT managers and blog service providers, our results also highlight the importance of being gender aware in an effort to elicit participation from all constituent members for the successful adoption and usage of blogs as a knowledge-sharing mechanism.

Strong contributors to network persistence are the most vulnerable to extinction

Abstract: Nodes in cooperative networks, such as those between plants and their pollinators or service providers and their contractors, form complex networks of interdependences. In these mutualistic networks, nodes that contribute to the nestedness of the network improve its stability. However, this study, using ecological data from 20 plant–pollinator networks and from socioeconomic networks, shows that these same nodes do not reap the benefits. In fact, the nodes that contribute the most to network persistence are also the most vulnerable to extinction. The architecture of mutualistic networks facilitates coexistence of individual participants by minimizing competition relative to facilitation1,2. However, it is not known whether this benefit is received by each participant node in proportion to its overall contribution to network persistence. This issue is critical to understanding the trade-offs faced by individual nodes in a network3,4,5. We address this question by applying a suite of structural and dynamic methods to an ensemble of flowering plant/insect pollinator networks. Here we report two main results. First, nodes contribute heterogeneously to the overall nested architecture of the network. From simulations, we confirm that the removal of a strong contributor tends to decrease overall network persistence more than the removal of a weak contributor. Second, strong contributors to collective persistence do not gain individual survival benefits but are in fact the nodes most vulnerable to extinction. We explore the generality of these results to other cooperative networks by analysing a 15-year time series of the interactions between designer and contractor firms in the New York City garment industry. As with the ecological networks, a firm's survival probability decreases as its individual nestedness contribution increases. Our results, therefore, introduce a new paradox into the study of the persistence of cooperative networks, and potentially address questions about the impact of invasive species in ecological systems and new competitors in economic systems.

TrustedDB: a trusted hardware based database with privacy and data confidentiality

Abstract: TrustedDB is an outsourced database prototype that allows clients to execute SQL queries with privacy and under regulatory compliance constraints without having to trust the service provider. TrustedDB achieves this by leveraging server-hosted tamper-proof trusted hardware in critical query processing stages.TrustedDB does not limit the query expressiveness of supported queries. And, despite the cost overhead and performance limitations of trusted hardware, the costs per query are orders of magnitude lower than any (existing or) potential future software-only mechanisms. TrustedDB is built and runs on actual hardware, and its performance and costs are evaluated here.

WSPred: A Time-Aware Personalized QoS Prediction Framework for Web Services

Abstract: The exponential growth of Web service makes building high-quality service-oriented applications an urgent and crucial research problem. User-side QoS evaluations of Web services are critical for selecting the optimal Web service from a set of functionally equivalent service candidates. Since QoS performance of Web services is highly related to the service status and network environments which are variable against time, service invocations are required at different instances during a long time interval for making accurate Web service QoS evaluation. However, invoking a huge number of Web services from user-side for quality evaluation purpose is time-consuming, resource-consuming, and sometimes even impractical (e.g., service invocations are charged by service providers). To address this critical challenge, this paper proposes a Web service QoS prediction framework, called WSPred, to provide time-aware personalized QoS value prediction service for different service users. WSPred requires no additional invocation of Web services. Based on the past Web service usage experience from different service users, WSPred builds feature models and employs these models to make personalized QoS prediction for different users. The extensive experimental results show the effectiveness and efficiency of WSPred. Moreover, we publicly release our real-world time-aware Web service QoS dataset for future research, which makes our experiments verifiable and reproducible.

Dynamics of value propositions: insights from service‐dominant logic

Abstract: Purpose – This article examines the notion of value propositions (promises of reciprocal value between service providers and their customers), value-in-exchange and value-in-use, all within the co ...

Quality--Speed Conundrum: Trade-offs in Customer-Intensive Services

Abstract: In many services, the quality or value provided by the service increases with the time the service provider spends with the customer. However, longer service times also result in longer waits for customers. We term such services, in which the interaction between quality and speed is critical, as customer-intensive services. In a queueing framework, we parameterize the degree of customer intensity of the service. The service speed chosen by the service provider affects the quality of the service through its customer intensity. Customers queue for the service based on service quality, delay costs, and price. We study how a service provider facing such customers makes the optimal “quality--speed trade-off.” Our results demonstrate that the customer intensity of the service is a critical driver of equilibrium price, service speed, demand, congestion in queues, and service provider revenues. Customer intensity leads to outcomes very different from those of traditional models of service rate competition. For instance, as the number of competing servers increases, the price increases, and the servers become slower. This paper was accepted by Sampath Rajagopalan, operations and supply chain management.

System and Method for Real Time Self-Provisioning for a Mobile Communication Device

Abstract: A system and method of provisioning services for a mobile communication device are disclosed. A provisioning request including provisioning information and specifying a provisioning operation and a first communication service is prepared on the mobile communication device and sent to a provisioning system. Processing of the provisioning request is dependent upon whether or not a second communication service has been activated for the mobile communication device. If the mobile communication device is outside a coverage area of a wireless communication network when a provisioning request is prepared, the request is stored at the mobile communication device and sent to the provisioning system when the mobile communication device enters the coverage area. The provisioning system preferably manages service provisioning for multiple services, any of which may be hosted by different service providers.

Trajectory privacy in location-based services and data publication

Abstract: The ubiquity of mobile devices with global positioning functionality (eg, GPS and AGPS) and Internet connectivity (eg, 3G andWi-Fi) has resulted in widespread development of location-based services (LBS) Typical examples of LBS include local business search, e-marketing, social networking, and automotive traffic monitoring Although LBS provide valuable services for mobile users, revealing their private locations to potentially untrusted LBS service providers pose privacy concerns In general, there are two types of LBS, namely, snapshot and continuous LBS For snapshot LBS, a mobile user only needs to report its current location to a service provider once to get its desired information On the other hand, a mobile user has to report its location to a service provider in a periodic or on-demand manner to obtain its desired continuous LBS Protecting user location privacy for continuous LBS is more challenging than snapshot LBS because adversaries may use the spatial and temporal correlations in the user's location samples to infer the user's location information with higher certainty Such user location trajectories are also very important for many applications, eg, business analysis, city planning, and intelligent transportation However, publishing such location trajectories to the public or a third party for data analysis could pose serious privacy concerns Privacy protection in continuous LBS and trajectory data publication has increasingly drawn attention from the research community and industry In this survey, we give an overview of the state-of-the-art privacy-preserving techniques in these two problems

Using the Context, Input, Process, and Product Evaluation Model (CIPP) as a Comprehensive Framework to Guide the Planning, Implementation, and Assessment of Service-learning Programs

Abstract: Planning, implementing, and assessing a service-learning projectcan be a complex task because service-learning projects ofteninvolve multiple constituencies and aim to meet both the needsof service providers and community partners. In this article,Stufflebeam’s Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) evaluationmodel is recommended as a framework to systematicallyguide the conception, design, implementation, and assessmentof service-learning projects, and provide feedback and judgmentof the project’s effectiveness for continuous improvement. Thisarticle (1) explores the CIPP evaluation model’s theoretical rootsand applications, (2) delineates its four components, (3) analyzeseach component’s role in a service-learning project’s success,and (4) discusses how the model effectively addresses Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. This article illustratesthe application and evaluation of the model in a teacher-educationservice-learning tutoring project.

Cloud service agency, cloud computing method and cloud system

Abstract: The disclosure discloses a cloud service broker, a cloud computing method and a cloud system. The cloud service broker comprises: a cloud service publishing interface module, configured to subscribe to information of cloud computing services and/or resources provided by a plurality of cloud service providers; a cloud service consuming interface module, configured to provide a consuming interface for a cloud service requester to access the cloud service provider; a cloud service processing module, configured to process a cloud service consumer request of the cloud service requester; and a cloud service adapting module, configured to adapt or call, according to cloud service consumer request, cloud computing services and/or resources provided by the cloud service provider. With the disclosure, the effect of facilitating cloud service requesters to use cloud services provided by different cloud service providers is achieved. Furthermore, system resources are saved and the system efficiency is improved.

Collaboration-Based Cloud Computing Security Management Framework

Abstract: Although the cloud computing model is considered to be a very promising internet-based computing platform, it results in a loss of security control over the cloud-hosted assets. This is due to the outsourcing of enterprise IT assets hosted on third-party cloud computing platforms. Moreover, the lack of security constraints in the Service Level Agreements between the cloud providers and consumers results in a loss of trust as well. Obtaining a security certificate such as ISO 27000 or NIST-FISMA would help cloud providers improve consumers trust in their cloud platforms' security. However, such standards are still far from covering the full complexity of the cloud computing model. We introduce a new cloud security management framework based on aligning the FISMA standard to fit with the cloud computing model, enabling cloud providers and consumers to be security certified. Our framework is based on improving collaboration between cloud providers, service providers and service consumers in managing the security of the cloud platform and the hosted services. It is built on top of a number of security standards that assist in automating the security management process. We have developed a proof of concept of our framework using. NET and deployed it on a test bed cloud platform. We evaluated the framework by managing the security of a multi-tenant SaaS application exemplar.

Demand-based provisioning for a mobile communication device

Abstract: In accordance with the teachings described herein, systems and methods are provided for providing demand-based provisioning for a mobile communication device A provisioning server may be used to receive a provisioning update request from the mobile communication device and in response to the provisioning update request transmit a service update data message to the mobile communication device The service update data message may include service information for the mobile communication device that is received by the provisioning server from at least one of a plurality of service providers The mobile communication device may be operable to detect a triggering event and transmit the provisioning update request to the provisioning server in response to the triggering event

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Abstract: ion The most significant change with cloud computing is that of abstraction. As we will describe in the following section, most cloud providers provide one or more service layers to their consumers. The operational aspect of the layers supporting the service is insulated from the customer. So, a Software as a Service (SaaS) customer will interact with the application itself, but not with the operating system or hardware of the respective cloud. This key difference allows organizations that do not have the necessary system administration skills or compute facilities to leverage enterprise applications hosted by others. Many of the technologies that assist in providing these capabilities have been present for many years. Virtualization and autonomic response are areas of computing that have been well understood for decades, as has the Internet. Providers of cloud computing were able to assemble these disparate technologies into the above capabilities, ultimately defining cloud computing. Defining Cloud Computing & 3 C01 06/09/2011 11:33:45 Page 4 CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES LAYERS Cloud computing providers provide different kinds of services to cloud computing consumers. In order to understand the different layers of service, it’s important to understand how they would relate in a noncloud computing scenario. See Exhibit 1.1. The kind of service being provided has many implications on the provider, including how they address concerns such as security, resiliency, compliance, and multitenancy. Cloud computing services fall into one of the following categories, as shown in Exhibit 1.2. Operating system Middleware Software Infrastructure as a Service Platform as a Service Software as a Service EXHIBIT 1.1 Traditional Model versus Cloud Computing Model Infrastructure as a Service Platform as a Service Software as a Service EXHIBIT 1.2 Categories of Cloud Computing Services 4 & Introduction to Cloud Computing C01 06/09/2011 11:33:45 Page 5 Infrastructure as a Service Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers allow their customers access to different kinds of infrastructure. The provider typically provides this service by dividing a very large physical infrastructure resource into smaller virtual resources for access by the consumer. Sometimes the service provided is a complete virtual machine with an operating system. In other instances the service provided is simply for storage, or perhaps a bare virtual machine with no operating system. In cases where the operating system or other software is included, the cost of the required license is either amalgamated into the cost for the service, or included as an additional surcharge. IaaS providers are often service providers to other cloud providers (see Integrator). Many current Platform as a Service providers leverage IaaS providers for extra capacity on demand. One of the more popular IaaS providers is Amazon, who provides their EC2 IaaS. Platform as a Service Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers extend the software stack provided by IaaS to include middleware. Middleware generically refers to software such as a DB2 database, or runtime environments such as a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or a Websphere application server. This middleware is a prerequisite to running more sophisticated applications, and provides a rich operating environment for the application to exploit. PaaS providers have two methods in which they facilitate the extra capacity needed for a large multitenant system. In some cases, they provide IaaS style virtual machines to the consumer. In other cases they provide an interface through which applications in the case of a runtime environment, or data in the case of a database, can be uploaded. A popular example of a PaaS is Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. Each method has its advantages and challenges. With an IaaS style approach, the provider typically has more control and stronger separation between tenants. This approach is less efficient, however, as common overhead such as the operating system and the virtual machine itself are duplicated across multiple tenants. In the second case, the underlying infrastructure is addressed in a much more efficient manner, with a single system image and middleware overhead amortized amongst multiple clients. Conversely, the main challenge with this approach lies in the degree of separation that can be provided between tenants. A runtime environment that is not robust or a misconfigured database can allow one user to adversely affect the quality of service of other users. Cloud Computing Services Layers & 5 C01 06/09/2011 11:33:45 Page 6 Software as a Service Application as a Service, or Software as a Service (SaaS) providers as they are more commonly known, typically provide a rich web-based interface to their customers. The customer, in most cases, is completely abstracted from the nuances of the application running behind the scenes. Tenant separation is often done at the application layer, leaving a common application, platform, and infrastructure layer underneath. Popular examples of SaaS include Google Apps and Salesforce.com. SaaS providers typically increase the capacity of their systems through scale up or scale out methods—depending on the characteristics of the application. SaaS applications that scale up are usually moved to larger platforms as their capacity requirements grow. SaaS applications that scale out are typically run on large clusters of servers. As additional capacity is required, the provider adds additional machines to the cluster. As there is a significant amount of shared resources used between tenants in an SaaS environment, the ability of one tenant to affect the quality of service of other tenants is always a concern. The ability for an SaaS provider to adequately fence or insulate one tenant from another is key to maintaining quality of service. ROLES IN CLOUD COMPUTING The cloud-computing paradigm defines three key roles. These roles each have different responsibilities and expectations relative to one another. Any party might have multiple roles depending on the context. See Exhibit 1.3.

Cloud Computing: Security Issues and Research Challenges

Abstract: Cloud computing is an architecture for providing computing service via the internet on demand and pay per use access to a pool of shared resources namely networks, storage, servers, services and applications, without physically acquiring them. So it saves managing cost and time for organizations. Many industries, such as banking, healthcare and education are moving towards the cloud due to the efficiency of services provided by the pay-per-use pattern based on the resources such as processing power used, transactions carried out, bandwidth consumed, data transferred, or storage space occupied etc. Cloud computing is a completely internet dependent technology where client data is stored and maintain in the data center of a cloud provider like Google, Amazon, Salesforce.som and Microsoft etc. Limited control over the data may incur various security issues and threats which include data leakage, insecure interface, sharing of resources, data availability and inside attacks. There are various research challenges also there for adopting cloud computing such as well managed service level agreement (SLA), privacy, interoperability and reliability. This research paper outlines what cloud computing is, the various cloud models and the main security risks and issues that are currently present within the cloud computing industry. This research paper also analyzes the key research and challenges that presents in cloud computing and offers best practices to service providers as well as enterprises hoping to leverage cloud service to improve their bottom line in this severe economic climate.