Object Storage in the Cloud and Multi-cloud: State of the Art and the research challenges

The cloud has been one of the hottest topics of discussion in the information technology field, both in terms of research and on a commercial level, since its inception in the late 2000s. The ever increasing need for better, faster and more powerful computers to process the ever increasing amount of data has made the cloud an indispensable feature of modern IT. Due to its massive storage power the cloud has allowed corporate users, private users and researchers to centralize all their data and have access to it almost constantly so long as they have an internet connection. However, despite the obvious need for more storage capacity and the ever increasing reliance on storing files in the cloud no mainstream unified storage solution is available. This paper attempts to review and analyze the current cloud offerings on the market, the storage solutions provided both on a commercial level and on a theoretical level, the challenges of the multi-cloud and the challenges of any future research in this field.