Survey of Cloud-Based Content Sharing Research: Taxonomy of System Models and Case Examples

This paper illustrates various content sharing systems that take advantage of cloud’s storage and computational resources as well as their supporting conventional technologies. First, basic technology concepts supporting cloud-based systems from a client-server to cloud computing as well as their relationships and functional linkages are shown. Second, the taxonomy of cloud-based system models from the aspect of multiple clouds’ interoperability is explained. Interoperability can be categorized into provider-centric and client-centric scenarios. Each can be further divided into federated clouds, hybrid clouds, multi-clouds and aggregated service by broker. Third, practical cloud-based systems related to contents sharing are reported and their characteristics are discussed. Finally, future direction of cloud-based content sharing is suggested. key words: content sharing, client-server, shared storage, peer-to-peer, grid computing, cloud computing, object storage, interoperability, federated cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, aggregated service by broker, provider centric, client centric