Cloud Computing: All You Need To Know About

Cloud Computing provides us a means by which we can access the applications as utilities, over the Internet. It allows us to create, configure, and customize applications online.”

Cloud computing, also known as on-demand computing, is a kind of Internet-based computing, where shared resources, data and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand. OR

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm, where a large pool of systems are connected in private or public networks, to provide dynamically scalable infrastructure for application, data and file storage. With the advent of this technology, the cost of computation, application hosting, content storage and delivery is reduced significantly.

Cloud computing is a practical approach to experience direct cost benefits and it has the potential to transform a data center from a capital-intensive set up to a variable priced environment.

Forrester defines cloud computing as:

What is Cloud?

From this question definitely I am not asking about that cloud due to rain falls on earth, I am asking about the cloud which is comes from Cloud Computing.

Here Cloud refer to a Network or Internet, Basically cloud is something which is present at remote location. Cloud can provide services over network, i.e., on public networks or on private networks, i.e., WAN, LAN or VPN.

What is Cloud Computing?

If I am telling you in short – “Cloud computing is a general term for the delivery of hosted services over the Internet.”

Cloud Computing refers to manipulating, configuring, and accessing the applications online. It offers online data storage, infrastructure and application.

History of Cloud Computing:

One of the first questions asked with the introduction of a new technology is: “When was it invented?”

And the answer of this question is “It was a gradual evolution that started in the 1950s with mainframe computing.” Since then, cloud computing has been evolved from static clients to dynamic ones from software to services.

Cloud Computing Models:

Cloud Providers offer services that can be grouped into three categories.

1. Software as a Service (SaaS) –  In the software as a service (SaaS) model, users gain access to application software and databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms that run the applications.
   In this model, a complete application is offered to the customer, as a service on demand. A single instance of the service runs on the cloud & multiple end users are serviced. On the customers‟ side, there is no need for upfront investment in servers or software licenses, while for the provider, the costs are lowered, since only a single application needs to be hosted & maintained. Today SaaS is offered by companies such as Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Zoho, etc.

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – PaaS vendors offers a development environment to application developers. The provider typically develops toolkit and standards for development and channels for distribution and payment. In the PaaS models, cloud providers deliver a computing platform, typically including operating system, programming-language execution environment, database, and web server.
   Here, a layer of software, or development environment is encapsulated & offered as a service, upon which other higher levels of service can be built. The customer has the freedom to build his own applications, which run on the provider‟s infrastructure. To meet manageability and scalability requirements of the applications, PaaS providers offer a predefined combination of OS and application servers, such as LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP), restricted J2EE, Ruby etc. Google‟s App Engine, Force.com, etc are some of the popular PaaS examples.

3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – In the most basic cloud-service model - and according to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) - providers of IaaS offer computers – physical or (more often) virtual machines – and other resources. IaaS refers to online services that abstract user from the detail of infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc.
   IaaS provides basic storage and computing capabilities as standardized services over the network. Servers, storage systems, networking equipment, data centre space etc. are pooled and made available to handle workloads. The customer would typically deploy his own software on the infrastructure. Some common examples are Amazon, GoGrid, 3 Tera, etc.

Deployment Model:

Deployment models define the type of access to the cloud, i.e., how the cloud is located? Cloud can have any of the four types of access: Public, Private, Hybrid and Community.

1. Private Cloud – The Private Cloud allows systems and services to be accessible within an organization. It offers increased security because of its private nature.

2. Public Cloud – The Public Cloud allows systems and services to be easily accessible to the general public. Public cloud may be less secure because of its openness, e.g., e-mail.

3. Hybrid Cloud – The Hybrid Cloud combine both public and private cloud models. With a Hybrid Cloud, service providers can utilize 3rd party Cloud Providers in a full or partial manner thus increasing the flexibility of computing. The Hybrid cloud environment is capable of providing on-demand, externally provisioned scale. The ability to augment a private cloud with the resources of a public cloud can be used to manage any unexpected surges in workload.

 Cloud Computing Benefits:

• Lower computer costs:

  • You do not need a high-powered and high-priced computer to run cloud computing's web-based applications.
  • Since applications run in the cloud, not on the desktop PC, your desktop PC does not need the processing power or hard disk space demanded by traditional desktop software.
  • When you are using web-based applications, your PC can be less expensive, with a smaller hard disk, less memory, more efficient processor...
  • In fact, your PC in this scenario does not even need a CD or DVD drive, as no software programs have to be loaded and no document files need to be saved.

• Improved performance:

  • With few large programs hogging your computer's memory, you will see better performance from your PC.
  • Computers in a cloud computing system boot and run faster because they have fewer programs and processes loaded into memory…

• Reduced software costs:

  • Instead of purchasing expensive software applications, you can get most of what you need for free-ish!
    • most cloud computing applications today, such as the Google Docs suite.
  • better than paying for similar commercial software
    • which alone may be justification for switching to cloud applications.

• Increased Storage:

  • There are a number of reasons to attribute Cloud technology with lower costs. The billing model is pay as per usage; the infrastructure is not purchased thus lowering maintenance. Initial expense and recurring expenses are much lower than traditional computing.

• Flexibility:

  • This is an extremely important characteristic. With enterprises having to adapt, even more rapidly, to changing business conditions, speed to deliver is critical. Cloud computing stresses on getting applications to market very quickly, by using the most appropriate building blocks necessary for deployment.

Cloud Computing Challenges –

Despite its growing influence, concerns regarding cloud computing still remain. In our opinion, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and the model is worth exploring. Some common challenges are:

1. Data Protection - Data Security is a crucial element that warrants scrutiny. Enterprises are reluctant to buy an assurance of business data security from vendors. They fear losing data to competition and the data confidentiality of consumers. In many instances, the actual storage location is not disclosed, adding onto the security concerns of enterprises. In the existing models, firewalls across data centers (owned by enterprises) protect this sensitive information. In the cloud model, Service providers are responsible for maintaining data security and enterprises would have to rely on them.

2. Data Recovery and Availability - All business applications have Service level agreements that are stringently followed. Operational teams play a key role in management of service level agreements and runtime governance of applications. In production environments, operational teams support

Appropriate clustering and Fail over

Data Replication

System monitoring (Transactions monitoring, logs monitoring and others)

Maintenance (Runtime Governance)

Disaster recovery

Capacity and performance management

If, any of the above mentioned services is under-served by a cloud provider, the damage & impact could be severe.

3. Management Capabilities - Despite there being multiple cloud providers, the management of platform and infrastructure is still in its infancy. Features like „Auto-scaling‟ for example, are a crucial requirement for many enterprises. There is huge potential to improve on the scalability and load balancing features provided today.

4. Regulatory and Compliance Restrictions - In some of the European countries, Government regulations do not allow customer's personal information and other sensitive information to be physically located outside the state or country. In order to meet such requirements, cloud providers need to setup a data center or a storage site exclusively within the country to comply with regulations. Having such an infrastructure may not always be feasible and is a big challenge for cloud providers.

Future of Cloud Computing –

• Many of the activities loosely grouped together under cloud computing have already been happening and centralised computing activity is not a new phenomena
• Grid Computing was the last research-led centralised approach
• However there are concerns that the mainstream adoption of cloud computing could cause many problems for users
• Many new open source systems appearing that you can install and run on your local cluster
  • should be able to run a variety of applications on these systems

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