C –Level Guide to Cloud Computing or Cloud Computing Simplified
The concept of cloud computing has proliferated within organizations due to the great success stories circulated in the media. This guide will be a quick, high–level guide to cloud computing of what it entails, architecture, uses, benefits and how cloud computing can help your organization.
What is cloud computing ?
Cloud computing is defined as a style of computing that involves the use of products and/or services which are deliverable over the internet. This can include anything from applications, databases, infrastructure, platform, administration, storage, network capacity and all types of functions that are delivered by data centers and internal IT teams. It essentially extends resources while bringing the applicability of the web to the enterprise
Cloud Architecture
Cloud architecture can be compared to that of common internal stacks today. Cloud architecture contains: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) , Platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (Saas). These can be compared to the network, database and application levels of common software.
IaaS – This is the lowest layer delivering basic storage and compute capabilities as standardized services over the network. Here the resources are combined to leverage the products and services that the cloud can offer.
PaaS – This is the next layer up that provides a framework for the programming environment along with services to encapsulate the flexibility and ability to build, distribute, share new content or programs throughout the organization. An example of this is the Amazon EC2 and S3 services offered or the Force.com platform that allows partners to leverage an existing platform to build out additional functionality.
SaaS – This is the top layer that can be leveraged to include any combination of services, applications or databases that end users may interface with.
Cloud Models
Within the cloud there are several models that exist. The main cloud types are: Public, Private and Hybrid.
Public - Run by third parties that control all aspects of delivery to the organization, by products and services from different customers running on multiple servers and/or platforms and end users are not aware of who else and what other services are being delivered to other customers.
Private - Private clouds are on-demand infrastructure owned by a single customer who controls which applications run, and where. They own the server, network, and disk and can decide which users are allowed to use the infrastructure.
Hybrid - A hybrid cloud is a combination of the two models. This may entail where the organization owns a part of the infrastructure or application and the cloud providers own and administer the remaining services
Cloud Benefits/Usage
There are many advantages a cloud computing model can offer an organization. Included is a brief list of common benefits gained by cloud usage. This is a partial list and there are many other opportunities that may be gained depending on the model and services your organization requires.
· Leverage existing horizontal scalable hardware and software
· Lower administrative duties for the network and applications
· Reduce capital costs by turning them into operating costs, no upfront investment – a pay as you go model
· Reduce data center costs by maximizing utilization rates, load balancing to distribute wok etc.
· Virtualize different operating systems, images, platforms and applications while using the hardware
· Combining an enterprise stack of products and services
· Availability/Reliability, Density/ Scalability, Agility/Security
· Handle extra capacity for spikes in demand
· Deployment, testing and functional offloading of applications or tasks that that require server intensive processing
· Testing, development can be executed within the cloud, the saving of provisioning the hardware and software for these tasks can rapidly decrease product development time and speed time to market
· Lower energy costs by fully utilizing all hardware capacity
· Reduce IT start up costs
· Leverage existing usage of storage networks, easily restored in case of disruption (continuity planning)
Certain vendors within the cloud arena offer a combination of services and software for enterprises to utilize. Sun is one of the few vendors that offer software, systems, and services as a stack of products which may be utilized in combination or as a holistic solution. Other vendors that offer such products and services as IBM with the collaboration suites and social networking capabilities brought to the workplace through a cloud with its Lotus Live and other lotus products.
The interoperability of platforms systems and applications is still a while away as many providers lock-in proprietary services that do not allow organizations to move clouds or systems easily. This should also change in the future as technology evolves, open standards, common protocols, and API’s prevail. Organizations should demand that obstacles be removed in limiting the way they do business which includes the customer bill of rights when dealing vendors.
By offloading these IT and data functions your organization can focus on generating new business, intensely increase customer satisfaction and focus on the core processes that you have been successful at.
Organizations should evaluate their requirements, decide what options make sense to offload to the cloud and calculate the “costs” in doing so. This will give the business an insight to the possible benefits of cloud computing. Enterprises are also including content management as part of the services issued from a cloud as these systems are usually not as easily accepted when implemented as an on-premise solution. The cloud may also control a degree of change management which may influence the success of your project.
As technology moves forward more and more services and software for nearly every type of organizational task will become available. As recently as four years back not many if any supply chain softwares were offered as SaaS now several supply chain functions such as transportation, warehouse, demand and supplier relationship management applications are now readily available for consumption. Organizations now have a wide variety of choices that they may deploy from ERM systems to specific applications such as CRM and the like. For further information check our website.
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