Collaborative and Decentralized Storage Services

During recent years, decentralized storage services have emerged as a promising solution to support the IT industry. The decentralized aspect means that there are no central servers. Many of these services are based on cloud computing. Cloud computing is a novel paradigm that has altered our perception of computing infrastructures, software delivery and development models, and has been quickly adopted worldwide. In this way, several IT resources, such as heavy computing, massive storage, and high-capacity networks are offered as services, and these can be accessed from anywhere at any time. However, most popular cloud systems are based on a centralized approach, which introduces several limitations such as storage dependence, privacy, scalability, localization and connectivity. Collaborative infrastructures as peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have emerged as promising solutions for the management and storage of all data. This paper reviews different types of infrastructures as possible solutions to support distributed storage services.