Cloud Computing
It is said that you have large technology changes every 10 to 15 years. Well I would have to say we are at the 10 to 15 year mark. I believe that cloud computing is the newest and most dramatic technology in a while. Me and my other techie friends have talked about and conceptualized this technology for years. But now there is actual development that has been done to make it a reality. Businesses and consumers are actually starting to see benefits to it. But just like anything when there is a huge upside to it there also can be a down side to it. Actually consumers have been using a small part of cloud computing for years, it’s called webmail. All the free e-mail accounts consumers have used for years like g-mail, and yahoo e-mail and hot mail are all part of the cloud computing concept. Someone else is the one who absorbs the cost of the hardware to house the datacenter. Also someone else has to absorb the software cost and the licensing cost. And let’s not forget the huge overhead cost of just software maintenance such as patches and complete version up-grades. And probably the biggest cost of all is the security. Virus protection and firewall software and hardware can cost a fortune to maintain and keep current. All of this is absorbed by the cloud company and given to you for free. However let me make it clear that this is just for the average consumer. These mentioned above are not business grade options. You will have to pay for business grade software and services.
So for those of you who don’t quite understand what Cloud Computing is lets break it down into 5 categories:
- Software as a Service
- Infrastructure as a Service
- Storage as a Service
- Platform as a Service
- Hybrid Clouds
Software as a Service is where some sort of software a business would use runs on an internet based application. Salesforce.com is a good example. This enables the Salesforce software to run on a Cloud company’s datacenter and the company that wants to use that application pays a user license fee to them. Anyone in the company can access this software via the web and does not have to have it installed locally on their laptop or desktop. They can access it from any computer that connects to the web via log-in credentials.
Infrastructure as a Service is when you use/buy on-line server capacity as needed. You would design virtual server requirements as needed to run your companies software or for data storage. You would pay for this server power much like you pay for utilities for your home. You pay based on what you use. You can design your own virtual server based on current needs. You can choose how much memory you need what processor you want and what operating system you want to use.
Storage as a Service is similar to Infrastructure. You basically pay for what you use. You can buy the storage space you initially need for your business but when you want to increase it you don’t bare the burden of actually having to add physical space to your own datacenter, The cloud company takes care of all that for you. They simply just allocate you more storage space on their datacenter and charge you for it.
Platform as a Service or better know as PaaS is for developers used for developing and deploying web applications. Development can use vast amounts of resources. Large servers, huge amounts of data storage, a place to house all of the hardware, sophisticated cooling resources and so on. A company’s IT department utilizing PaaS can now focus on their own network efficiency rather than having to manage huge amounts of resources needed for the development group.
Hybrid Cloud is a way for a company to still utilize their own on premises data center and use cloud services for overflow. So if a company were to have a huge on-line sales promotion that might generate a large amount of web traffic or if they are working on a large development project which would overload their own data center they would simply use the cloud for over flow resources. Now this is probably a more difficult version of utilizing cloud services. This cloud service is probably more of a concept rather than a viable service. However you will probably see a demand for this due to the fact that companies still want to own and manage their own data centers but with much more efficiency and with a cost savings.
Just incase you think that this notion of cloud computing is a dream just look at some of the large companies that have been gearing up for this business for years, IBM, Google, Microsoft, VMware and so on. IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano points to their “Smarter Planet” campaign. They are involved in many projects that look to utilize technology better and more efficiently. IBM has been selling off its Hardware and PC business for close to a decade. In lieu of the hardware businesses they have acquired over 100 software and services companies. Mr. Palmisano notes that some of the larger industries would benefit from the cloud such as healthcare IT, smart grids and broadband opportunities. He also points out the millions of jobs this would create in the US.
In my opinion there are many advantages to cloud computing for businesses. First and foremost businesses would see a cost savings from cloud computing. These services that would be a cost savings are things like e-mail, lower licensing fees, fast deployment, security, hardware, disaster recovery, virus protection and so on.
The top concern of companies polled is “Security”. The concerns for these companies for housing their data off-site are:
- Unauthorized access and leak of proprietary company information.
- Unauthorized access and leak of the company’s customer data.
- Applications or systems performance.
- A risk that the cloud company you use fails and goes out of business.
- Disaster recovery.
- And the overall maturity of cloud technology.
Some of the answers to these security issues are addressed by the cloud companies using virtual servers in their data center. These virtual servers can be put behind a proxy server before they are ever visible to the internet. And security for e-mail can be addressed by encryption.
Security can also be a selling point for small and midsize companies. Small and mid sized companies can’t afford their own IT security teams and all the sophisticated hardware and software it takes to manage security. The cloud companies have the advantage of having high tech security teams, superior grade servers and firewall hardware and superior grade virus and firewall software. They also keep up to date with software patches and software version up-grades. All things the smaller companies don’t have the resources or money to continuously upkeep. All these things can add up to huge cost savings for these companies.
The flip side to cloud computing is that when there are huge amounts of data going to the internet the more attractive it becomes for attack. So what do you do? I think the cost savings is helping companies make that choice. However cloud computing is a much harder sell to large companies but I think in today’s economy the real alternative of cloud computing for these larger companies is becoming much more viable. Just ask the city of Los Angeles with 30,000 employees, GlaxoSmithKline with 100,000 employees and Coca-Cola Enterprises with their 72,000 employees. They have found ways to put their fears to rest because of the benefits of cloud computing. But a significant mention should be that they are using the biggest cloud companies like Microsoft, IBM and Google. A worth note should be is that all three companies, Microsoft, IBM and Google have a SAS-70 certification. This means that outside auditors have verified the security processes and controls within their companies.
In my opinion I think cloud Computing is for real and you will see all sorts and variations of this concept take off and move forward. I look at cloud computing like old technology of thin client infrastructure but on steroids! There are so many upsides to this new concept of cloud computing and in our evolving world they are necessary!
1 Comment to Cloud Computing
I wonder how things are going to shape up in the future with the cloud concept. I remember back in the day when the Seti@Home project and BOINC clients first came out that everyone was ecstatic over the concept of every computer in the world using their idle processing time to crunch numbers for projects or even acting as nodes in a larger system.
I still think that someday it may happen where we will have legitimate ‘botnets’ where people can sign up, run a daemon on their box which essentially joins a cloud to host say a ‘online office suite’. Users of the office suite online would get routed around the internet to different people’s individual computers instead of large datacenters.
With things like what F5 hardware can do, distributed & dynamic DNS, Akamai, the technology is almost there except for the session management & security. How do you distribute sessions across the net in case the client you’re connected to goes offline so you can resume your session on a different client transparently?
Much challenges but it’s coming. I think people are touting it as a viable technology when in fact it’s still in it’s infancy.
Nice post 
January 16, 2010