Cloud computing and Soft Computing

Clouding computing is emerging as a powerful new computing revolution, which many predict well not only reshape business, society and culture in a profound way, but also provide an electrifying impact on the way how we do research and education in science and engineering. It is the most recent evolution of distributed and scalable computing that uses internet-based ("cloud") computing. As described in Wikipedia, 'It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided "as a service," allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud") without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them." It incorporates a number of recent Web-based computing trends such as software as a service and Web2.0, and is quickly replacing cluster and grid computing that has been the preferred method of meeting needs for high end computing such as what is needed for many scientific computing applications.

Cloud computing is a technology that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth.

A simple example of cloud computing is Yahoo email, Gmail, or Hotmail etc. You dont need a software or a server to use them. All a consumer would need is just an internet connection and you can start sending emails. The server and email management software is all on the cloud ( internet) and is totally managed by the cloud service provider Yahoo , Google etc. The consumer gets to use the software alone and enjoy the benefits. The analogy is , 'If you need milk , would you buy a cow ?' All the users or consumers need is to get the benefits of using the software or hardware of the computer like sending emails etc. Just to get this benefit (milk) why should a consumer buy a (cow) software /hardware ?

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing and storage capacity  as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients. The name comes from the use of clouds as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts services with a user's data, software and computation over a network. It has considerable overlap with software as a service (SaaS).

End users access cloud based applications through a web browser or a light weight desktop or mobile app while the business software and data are stored on servers at a remote location. Proponents claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.

Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

Soft computing is a term applied to a field within computer science which is characterized by the use of inexact solutions to computationally hard tasks such as the solution of NP-complete problems, for which an exact solution cannot be derived in polynomial time.

Soft Computing became a formal Computer Science area of study in early 1990s. Earlier computational approaches could model and precisely analyze only relatively simple systems. More complex systems arising in biology, medicine, the humanities, management sciences, and similar fields often remained intractable to conventional mathematical and analytical methods. That said, it should be pointed out that simplicity and complexity of systems are relative, and many conventional mathematical models have been both challenging and very productive. Soft computing deals with imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation to achieve practicability, robustness and low solution cost.

Conclusion:

"Soft computing" is just automating process of computation. "Cloud computing" means you are just doing computation process according to your needs only. For example: there are kind of problems [identifying vowels and counting them in any given sentence] which a human brain can compute very easily. This is an example of "Soft Computing". Our human brain scans vowels and counts them in seconds. Now coming to "Cloud computing" - you make a program for this same above scenario and run it. That is part of "Cloud Computing". You are telling the computer -just a box to compute(or process) according to your needs. So that kind of computing is a part of "Hard computing". "Soft computing" is much much times faster than "Cloud Computing". Basic constituents of "Soft Computing" include Fuzzy Logic , Neural computing, Evolutionary computation, Machine learning and probabilistic reasong etc.