cloud computing made simple

Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02

Cloud Computing Made Simple

Cloud Computing is being introduced widely to end users by

not only professional IT consulting companies but also IT hardware

manufacturers. However, for a lot of users, Cloud Computing is still

somehow “fuzzy”, it’s something in the “sky”. Actually, Cloud

Computing is not something strange. It’s quite familiar with us.

We’re using it every day but we may not know it’s the “Cloud”!

Cloud Computing is not a new comer

There is an interesting truth that Cloud Computing has

existed for a long time through the services we’re using today.

However, not too many people know this. Even in a recent research

report of NPD Group about Cloud Computing [1], more than 76% of

respondents reported using some type of cloud services such as

webmail, online storage and online media sharing. However, only

22% of them were familiar with Cloud Computing. So, have you

ever stored your computer files in a place and use it anywhere else

(SkyDrive, Dropbox, MediaFire,…), ran applications through the

internet such as webmail (Gmail, Hotmail,…), office documents

(Google Docs, Office365,…), ran Virtual Machine? If so, you have

ever used Cloud Computing. We also heard about “as a service”

terms like Software as a service (SaaS).

In theory, Cloud Computing can be understood as the usage

computing resources (including software and hardware) through the

network connection (usually the internet). Simpler, you can

understand it as a huge online resources for end users and many

services will use these resources accordingly, to establish an online

eco-system. One example is Dropbox, an online storage service that

allow users register and store 2GB storage capacity [2] (free) or

much more (paid) on their servers. Or another services from Google

which you can store your files online also create online documents,

spreadsheets, calendars. By storing your data on service provider’s

huge servers (datacenter) with internet connection, you can access

your data and use your web-based application from anywhere (your

home, office, public zone), any compatible devices (your PC, laptop,

mobile phone, tablet) connected to the internet. By using your PC at

work, you can compose your document from your office with an

online application such as Google Docs, save them on the “Cloud”

and then turn your PC off. Later, when you go home, you turn on

your PC at home and continue composing your document previously

stored on the “Cloud”. In enterprise environments, Cloud

Computing even plays a more important role. It allows companies

reduce the operation costs such as cut down the cost to operate on-

premise servers (electricity, human resources), software licenses…

if companies change from using home-made software (project

management, email client software) to use online application

provided by service providers; change from using on-premise

servers to store files to use online storage services or even hire a

virtual server and access it through remote control software.


Cloud Computing provides almost of your needs

There are several kinds of Cloud Computing and they can be

grouped in three main types, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform

as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). In a

traditional computing model as shown in figure 1 below, we have 3

layers of services contained in a stack. The bottom layer is the

network and infrastructure service such as the hardware, network

connection… The middle layer is the Framework services such as

the Operating system, software development tools and

frameworks… The top layer is the application service, which is the

computer software we use every day.

Figure 1: Traditional computing model

According to Kevin Roebuck, Software as a Service or

Cloud software, sometimes referred to as “on-demand software” [3],

is a software delivery model in which the software and its data are

hosted and managed centrally by another third party company and

accessed by end users using a client application, normally a web

browser over the internet. There is no installation, no updates. This

delivery model has become more popular for many kinds of

applications including accounting, inventory, customer relationship

management… Instead of researching and developing owned

software, enterprise can use the software which is controlled and

managed by another company. Now a day, SaaS is recognized as

billion dollars industry. Many companies have successfully and

more and more ones are starting to invest in this industry as Marc

Benioff, Founder and CEO of salesfoce.com, says in his recent book

about salesforce.com, “It is the end of the software business model”

[4]. Some well-known SaaS companies and their products including

salesfoce.com with famous CRM online application, Google with

Google Docs….

Figure 2: Traditional vs. Cloud Computing model

A computing platform generally refers to a prefabricated

environment [5] where computer software is running. It provides core

software functionalities. Upon which, software developers can build


computing solutions to meet their customers’ needs. This environment

includes the Operating system (Windows, Linux…), application

frameworks (.Net, PHP); application services (IIS, Apache); middleware;

data storage and management. From this general understanding, when a

platform is managed and delivered “as a service”, it becomes Platform as

a service that serves as a launch pad for a cloud software, providing

necessity functionalities. PaaS providers will offer the platform for others

to use and take care of everything needed to run some specific

programing languages or technologies. Let’s take a look into a software

developer’s work. He needs to write code for computer software. Then,

need to configure the environment such as installing the database, setup

the web server and a few more things. He (or another member in his

company) will need to do this for him on every project and this process

takes time and cost. One day, he found a service that can offer him all of

the things he need just in a few seconds. The service provides him

everything and he just need to focus on writing the code to finish the

computer software on time. PaaS providers sometimes just simply deliver

a storage service to their customers. In a sales company, sales reports are

being centralized in a file server administrated by a system administrator.

He needs to setup the backup process for data files to make sure they are

safe from disaster. He also needs to increase the server capacity in case

there are a lot of requests to this server. Instead of doing so, the

company owner decides to use Dropbox storage service. Since then, they

don’t need to care about the data lost. Dropbox will synchronize local

data reports to their cloud platform. Now the system administrator can

focus on another duties assigned to him. Some famous PaaS providers

include Amazon with a series of elastic computing services, Microsoft

with Windows Azure, Google with Google Apps Engine.

Infrastructure as as Service, IaaS, in the other hand delivers

computing infrastructure as a service. It’s a virtual computing

environment. In the old days, when starting up a computing service,

organization must purchase servers with suitable capacity to meet

organization’s needs and the abilities to provide services to customer

quickly. Rather than purchasing real servers, network equipment, license

to run server operating system, organization instead will by these services

outsourced by another cloud service providers. In this way, organization

actually rents a “virtual server” and use, manage it over the internet. The

organization doesn’t care about the electricity, hardware maintenance,

physical disaster or even stolen by thieves. It’s also easy to scale the

virtual server’s computing capacity along with organization’s business

scaling. When the business increased or the organization is going to run a

business campaign which needs more extra capacity, virtual server will be

upgraded quickly and with a small cost. After that, this extra capacity will

be released and the organization will not be charged for it anymore. This

is a Pay per use service model because we just pay for what we really use

and doesn’t pay for unnecessary things. There are famous providers in

IaaS such as Amazon with Amazon’s EC2 [6] instances and Microsoft with

Microsoft Windows Azure Virtual Machine [7] role.

The reason of IaaS being possible is virtualization. As mentioned

previously, the server we use is a “virtual server”. It’s not a real server, it’s

not a dedicated server existed in the office and you cannot “touch” it.

Instead, it’s all operating virtually by virtualization software. In the past

time, one operating system can be run only on one physical machine. If

you have a physical machine, you will setup an operating system like

Microsoft Windows and necessary applications on it. If you need to run a

special application that requires a Linux operating system, you will need


to use another physical machine. However, with server virtualization

software, now a day we can run more than 1 operating system in a

physical machine. In reality, Infrastructure as a service is not limited to a

single server but rather it relies on a series of servers on a datacenter.

Any user can scale up to use extra computing capacity when needed. One

virtual server can be cloned as many as the user needs.

Cloud Computing Deployment models

Each organization may have different use of Cloud services.

Some purchase strong servers and run several virtual machines on

that server and resources will be used privately in those

organizations. This deployment, we call it Private Cloud. This

model of cloud doesn’t public to everybody. It just serves locally

within an organization and may be put under control of an IT

department. The Public Cloud, in the other hand, will expose its

services and share its resources to everyone to use it with free or

paid like Dropbox, Gmail, and Hotmail… Within an organization,

there are some cases that the organization needs to use the public

services. For example, when a company builds up a private cloud

and there is a file server. However, in this file server, the IT

department configures Dropbox to synchronize local data files to

Dropbox storage service. In this model, a private cloud (company

based cloud) uses services from public cloud (Dropbox) and we call

it a Hybrid cloud, a mixture of Private and Public cloud.

Figure 3: Cloud Computing deployment models

Privacy and security on the Cloud

By using Cloud services, we’re using our data remotely. In

other words, our data is being managed and secured by the

providers. Many questions come up but the most important one is

how secure our data is. We don’t control our data. Will it be lost?

Can our data be leaked? Is there any unauthorized access to our

data? Those concerns are amongst Cloud Computing challenges.

Almost Cloud providers will have a commitment to protect

customers’ data on the cloud but don’t provide the information of

how they protect them. So, while choosing the right provider,

organization almost based on provider’s profile and trust.


Conclusion

Cloud computing is completely real and it’s day by day

affecting everyone, all areas of business. It opens a new era of

computing based on services. Individuals and companies focus on

the main business and somebody else that is more expertise take

care of our computing abilities and we know they will do better than

us. We’re in the age where billions of people are being wirelessly

interconnected. A long with the fast development of the

infrastructure, when the internet connection is as fast as local

connection, Cloud Computing becomes more popular. It is changing

the way organizations do computing. Furthermore, the Cloud service

market has been predicted with a hundreds of billions dollars [8] in

the next coming years and it is a potential market for organizations.


References

[1] NPD Group. (2011, September) Involving Technology. [Online]. https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr_110809

[2] Dropbox, Inc. (2013, February) Dropbox pricing term. [Online]. https://www.dropbox.com/terms#pricing_terms

[3] Kevin Roebuck, SaaS: High impact technology.: Tebbo, 2011.

[4] Benioff Marc and Carlye Adler, Behind the Cloud, 1st ed.: Jossey-Bass, October 2009.

[5] Blacharski Dan and Landis Cary, Cloud Computing Made Easy.: lulu.com, 2010.

[6] Inc. Amazon Web Service. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. [Online]. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

[7] Microsoft Corporation. Windows Azure VM role. [Online]. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/

[8] Gartner, Inc. (2013) Gartner report on Cloud service. [Online]. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2163616

https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr_110809

https://www.dropbox.com/terms#pricing_terms

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2163616

cloud computing made simple

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