Saturday, August 13, 2011

SAAS - Software or Storage as a service ???????

I have been researching about cloud computing since the year of 2011 arrived. And now I have settled to do my dissertation under this topic because of  Intellectual Property Rights issues arising in cloud computing. Under cloud computing currently there are three service models called IaaS - Infrastructure as a service , PaaS - Platform as a service and SaaS - Software as a service .While doing online searches I have been confused by the term SaaS . Why is there a confusion ?????????


Actually SaaS means Software as a service and some also refer to it as a Storage as a service. Storage service comes under the purview of IaaS - Infrastructure as a service i.e this service model provides servers, networks to the customer and also includes storage service. So is there a new service called Storage as a service emerging in the cloud or is it a sub type of IaaS ???? 

A simple example for storage as a service is www.dropbox.com where you can store your files and share with others. The site is exclusively meant for storing your files online and access them anywhere no matter where you work. In some books Storage as a service is termed as STaaS. But in some websites it is termed like SaaS which confuses , but after reading the content you get to know that it is storage as a service. But I strongly go for the term STaaS for Storage as a service.Ultimately I feel that there is confusion. I hope the confusion gets clarified as soon as possible. 




Thursday, August 11, 2011

Google Books and its disadvantage

I have been using Google Books for finding study materials for the past 2 years. It's simply great to search and find out relevant study materials with keywords of your subject. After you type the keywords and enter, you will get lot of books which has those keywords. If you know the book title its still better to search or also with the author's name you can search or also with publishers. 

When I keep reading the book continuously, some pages of the books are not available for reading because they are copyrighted and hence those pages are omitted from viewing. While reading an interesting part of the book , if some pages are omitted it annoys me because the continuity is not there hence am not able to get the whole study material. Lets say if  I am reading a chapter of the book to understand the concept I cannot get to understand the whole concept because the pages are omitted.This feeling is just like where you keep reading a novel and the last page of the novel is missing . There are also limited options to view a book like either you have to buy or browse it in online library.


It is not affordable to buy each book just for some of the areas of the topic. Also as I mentioned earlier that the whole books can be viewed in online libraries, that is the libraries situated ONLY within United States Of America and not outside [Given in this Google Books Settlement Agreement] :( Good that many libraries are engaged with Google to provide books online in a subscription model. Also many Universities Libraries are in tie to provide this service. It's really a good opportunity for the students, researchers, scholars etc who are in USA.


What about the condition of students like me in India and in other countries ?????? There is little options to view such books which are required to study. All this is because of the Copyright Protection. As an Intellectual Property Law Student I would like to put forward my views in this area. Copyright generally protects literary and artistic works. To balance the private interest and public interest in the copyright law there are certain exceptions like fair use for educational and research purpose provided in copyright law. Even as a student, for educational and research purpose am unable to view the books under these exceptions.

I wish this facility is brought outside USA also by which most of them would be benefited and especially students like me would be more benefited if the institutional subscription is offered in India :) If it is done so then we can do our research with lots of material :) Finally, I request Google to consider this and do the best for the whole world as it is doing now in other areas.