M.Lakshmi Neelima et al, International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, Vol.3 Issue.5, May- 2014, pg. 966-971 © 2014, IJCSMC All Rights Reserved 966 Available Online at www.ijcsmc.com International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing A Monthly Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology ISSN 2320–088X IJCSMC, Vol. 3, Issue. 5, May 2014, pg.966 – 971 RESEARCH ARTICLE A STUDY ON CLOUD STORAGE M. Lakshmi Neelima 1 , M. Padma 2 1 Asst Prof, CSE Dept, GPREC, KURNOOL, neelimedum@gmail.com 2 Asst Prof, CSE Dept, GPREC, KURNOOL, padma.gprec@gmail.com ABSTRACT Cloud computing is the emerging technology. Cloud computing provides easy access and high performanance computing on the data .Another major challenge that today software companies face, are storage of data at affordable cost and make available all the time. This paper provides the study on introduction to cloud storage and virtual storage architecture. INTRODUCTION Day to day, the usage of data in the computer has been increasing from common man to organization. The question arises where to store the important data, how to share the data, how to access the data globally, how to manage the data, how to make data available all the time, how can all these be achieved with reasonable cost? The answer to all these questions is cloud computing. NIST [1] defines Cloud computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING The factors that make more companies to move cloud are  Reduces the maintenance cost like no need of licensed software fee for each system, the purchase of new hardware and software is reduced.  Access to the application can be done anytime, anywhere provided that they should be connected to internet.  Scalable  Improves Flexibility  Disaster Recovery  As the services are based on ”Pay per use” ,capital expenditure can be reduced