Ones Own Call Of Cloud Computing

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Cloud computing technology has been a new buzzword in the IT industry and expecting a new horizon for coming world. However, in many organizations there is a lingering sense that the IT function is focused on technology infrastructure and not on harnessing the information and knowledge that IT investments deliver. Cloud computing has the potential to improve the value of IT. This paper provides brief details about the cloud computing with an overview of key features to give a glimpse about the new focused technology and how it’s one company’s own call to use it or not to use it.

Cloud Computing: One’s Own Call

Cloud computing technology has been a new buzzword in the IT industry and expecting a new horizon for coming world. However, in many organizations there is a lingering sense that the IT function is focused on technology infrastructure and not on harnessing the information and knowledge that IT investments deliver. Cloud computing has the potential to improve the value of IT. This article provides brief details about the cloud computing with an overview of key features to give a glimpse about the new focused technology.

1. What is Cloud Computing?

Many people are confused as to exactly what cloud computing is, especially as the term can be used to mean almost anything. NIST Defines Cloud Computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Economically, the main appeal of cloud computing is that customers only use what they need, and only pay for what they actually use. Resources are available to be accessed from the cloud at any time, and from any location via the internet. There’s no need to worry about how things are being maintained behind the scenes since you simply purchase the IT service you require as you would any other utility.

2. Different Concepts

2.1 Public Cloud

Public cloud (also referred to as ‘external’ cloud) describes the conventional meaning of cloud computing: scalable, dynamically provisioned, often virtualized resources available over the Internet from an off-site third party provider, which divides up resources and bills its customers on a ‘utility’.

The benefit of a private cloud is improved security; however, by having to maintain your own infrastructure you lose the cloud’s potential advantages. Examples are Salesforce.com, Amazon EC2.

2.2 Private Cloud

Private cloud (also referred to as ‘corporate’ or ‘internal’ cloud) is a term used to denote a proprietary computing architecture providing hosted services on private networks. This type of cloud computing is generally used by large companies, and allows their corporate network and data center administrators to effectively become in-house ‘service providers’ catering to ‘customers’ within the corporation. However, it negates many of the benefits of cloud computing, as organizations still need to purchase, set up and manage their own clouds

2.3 Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. For example, an organization might use a public cloud service, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for archived data but continue to maintain in-house storage for operational customer data. Ideally, the hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.

3. Different Models

3.1 Software as a Service (SaaS)

The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. Examples - Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365.

.3.2 Platform as a Service (PaaS)

This type of cloud computing deliver development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider's servers. In this model, the consumer creates the software using tools and/or libraries from the provider. The consumer also controls software deployment and configuration settings. The provider provides the networks, servers, storage and other services. Examples - Google App Engine, Windows Azure Compute.

3.3 Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

It is the most basic cloud-service model in which providers of IaaS offer computers - physical or (more often) virtual machines - and other resources. (A hypervisor, such as Xen or KVM, runs the virtual machines as guests.) Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational support-system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements. IaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as images in a virtual-machine image-library, raw (block) and file-based storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.

To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed. Examples - Amazon EC2, Windows Azure Virtual Machines, HP Cloud.

4. Benefits of Cloud Computing

There is a lot of benefit for the business looking for the service from the cloud service provider. Apart from the bundle of suits they have to offer, it focus all an escape from huge investment into IT infrastructure and operating cost.

4.1 Anytime, Anyplace: Organizational Flexibility

The fact that users only require a device with a browser to access the applications they need means that they can access services when and where needed. This supports working from home, allowing many staff members to enjoy a better quality of work life. Working from home can lead to "hot desking" (desks shared between people who work at different times), which in turn leads to a decreased need for office space. Hence, lower costs and an improved environmental record are part of the cloud outcome.

4.2 Happy CFO: Reduced Cost of Infrastructure

The cloud approach moves technology spending off the balance sheet and onto the profit and loss statement. Technology assets are fast-depreciating and typically underutilized. The cloud makes this someone else’s problem. The service-based model makes it easier to predict cash flow requirements, and much greater efficiency is obtained when the service provider offers a pay-per-use model. No longer needing to purchase expensive hardware and applications means no more cost spikes in the IT cash flow. With cloud computing, payment is spread over the duration of the service.

4.3 Reduced administration costs

IT solutions can be deployed extremely quickly and managed, maintained, patched and upgraded remotely by your service provider. Technical support is provided round the clock by reputable providers for no extra charge, reducing the burden on IT staff. This means that they are free to focus on business-critical tasks, and businesses can avoid incurring additional manpower and training costs. IT giant IBM has pointed out that cloud computing allows organisations to streamline procurement processes, and eliminates the need to duplicate certain computer administrative skills related to setup, configuration, and support.

4.4 Improved resource utilisation

Combining resources into large clouds reduces costs and maximises utilisation by delivering resources only when they are needed. Businesses needn’t worry about over-provisioning for a service whose use does not meet their predictions, or under-provisioning for one that becomes unexpectedly popular. Moving more and more applications, infrastructure, and even support into the cloud can free up precious time, effort and budgets to concentrate on the real job of exploiting technology to improve the mission of the company. It really comes down to making better use of your time – focusing on your business and allowing cloud providers to manage the resources to get you to where you need to go. Sharing computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilisation rates, as servers are not left idle, which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development. A side effect of this approach is that computer capacity rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak loads.

4.5 Scalability on demand

Scalability and flexibility are highly valuable advantages offered by cloud computing, allowing customers to react quickly to changing IT needs, adding or subtracting capacity and users as and when required and responding to real rather than projected requirements. Even better, because cloud-computing follows a utility model in which service costs are based on actual consumption, you only pay for what you use. Customers benefit from greater elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale.

4.6 Helps smaller businesses compete

Historically, there has been a huge disparity between the IT resources available to small businesses and to enterprises. Cloud computing has made it possible for smaller companies to compete on an even playing field with much bigger competitors. ‘Renting’ IT services instead of investing in hardware and software makes them much more affordable, and means that capital can instead be used for other vital projects.

4.7 Guaranteed uptime, SLAs.

Always ask a prospective provider about reliability and guaranteed service levels – ensure your applications and/or services are always online and accessible.

5. Services – Used in Cloud

There are numerous services that can be delivered through cloud computing, taking advantage of the distributed cloud model. Here are some brief descriptions of a few of the most popular cloud-based IT solutions:

5.1 Hosted Email

As more organisations look for a secure, reliable email solution that will not cost the earth, they are increasingly turning to hosted Microsoft Exchange email plans. Using the world’s premier email platform, this service lets organisations both large and small reap the benefits of using MS Exchange® accounts without having to invest in the costly infrastructure themselves. Email is stored centrally on managed servers, providing redundancy and fast connectivity from any location. This allows users to access their email, calendar, contacts and shared files by a variety of means, including Outlook, Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) and Outlook Web Access (OWA).

5.2 Hosted Desktops

Hosted desktops remove the need for traditional desktop PCs in the office environment, and reduce the cost of providing the services that you need. A hosted desktop looks and behaves like a regular desktop PC, but the software and data customers use are housed in remote, highly secure data centres, rather than on their own machines. Users can simply access their hosted desktops via an internet connection from anywhere in the world, using either an existing PC or laptop or, for maximum cost efficiency, a specialised device called a thin client.

5.3 Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is growing in popularity due to the benefits it provides, such as simple, Capex-free costs, anywhere access and the removal of the burden of in-house maintenance and management. It is basically the delivery of data storage as a service, from a third party provider, with access via the internet and billing calculated on capacity used in a certain period.

6. Concerns of Cloud Computing

The benefits of cloud computing sound compelling, particularly to those who have long held reservations about their IT group’s ability to meet their business needs!! And yes, pursuing a public cloud strategy is essentially the same as outsourcing. As a result, many cloud-computing vendors offer greater data security and confidentiality than companies that choose to store their data in-house. However, not all vendors will offer the same level of security. It is recommended that anyone with concerns over security and access should research vendors' policies before using their services.

6.1 Your Security Risks Will Increase

Use of the public cloud means that more of your data will travel along the public network and thus outside the direct control of your IT function. According to a poll taken during the Cisco CIO Summit, 51 Percent of the attendees cited security and regulatory compliance as the main challenge they face with cloud computing. That is why many CIOs are choosing private clouds to help with the management of security.

6.2 Sensitive information needs safer storage.

Safely storing sensitive information is one of the toughest problems in cloud computing. The solution is to encrypt data, but the critical questions are where to encrypt, and how. The first requirement of successful encryption in the cloud, which some providers do not yet understand (or at least don't practice), is: Do not store the encryption key with the encrypted data. Doing so more or less negates any value gained from encrypting the data.

6.3 Applications aren't secure.

Application security has been getting attention for years. In my mind, its importance increases when an application is deployed to a cloud environment, as the application is more exposed.

One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to take an existing application and simply deploy it to a cloud without first considering what new attack vectors this move opens up. When possible, an application should be re-architected for cloud deployment—this allows parts of the application to scale independently, and to be more distributed and resilient. It's really an opportunity to make an application more secure than ever. Forcing a development team to not use the corporate firewall as a crutch will result in a solid application.

6.4 Not Everything Lends Itself to the Cloud

Organizations may have applications that are developed for their specific needs. Such applications do not lend themselves to outsourcing. Typical providers of cloud-based services would find no benefit in accepting a single application, as their model is usually based on a developing an application once and selling it many times.

6.5 Legal Exposure

Embracing cloud computing may invite legal risk. Many cloud applications decouple data access from data storage. In other words, users do not know (and in most cases do not care) where their data resides.

For example, a cloud service vendor may say that your data is stored on their U.K. servers, but these U.K.-labelled servers are located in the U.S. Your organization is exposed to the data regulations associated with where your data physically resides. Inadvertently you may be breaking some other country’s laws.

7. Actions to Lessen Risk

Manage the Enterprise Architecture

Ensure that your enterprise architecture is documented and adhered to. Cloud purchases need to be made within the enterprise architecture framework. That is to say, if cloud-based services offer an improvement to the business processes of a given department, this needs to be considered in the context of the enterprise architecture. Once silos of incompatible data start to accumulate, you have a serious problem. Conversely, if you invest in getting this right you may soon gain a significant competitive advantage.

Cloud computing requests need to pass through the IT department to minimize enterprise architecture risks. Similarly, automating poorly-thought-out business processes will simply enhance your inefficiency. Where the cloud services vendor has a better approach (for example, to invoice management), then give serious consideration to reengineering the associated processes to map onto the service.

Involve Your Lawyers

As mentioned, there are legal risks involving data storage. Also be aware that e-discovery may become an issue with a cloud-based model. For example, if one of your customers complains about one of your staff communicating inappropriately, to what extent will your providers furnish you with copies of emails, text messages, and video correspondence? A failure to deliver evidence is the equivalent of guilt. Your legal team needs to ensure that legal issues are addressed when you adopt cloud services.

Keep the Customer in Mind

Any move to cloud-based services must be done with the customer in mind. The cloud has the potential to help your organization deliver more for less. So ensure that cloud services adoption takes place only when the customer impact is fully understood.

Know Where to Start and Evaluate

Ask yourself these questions before starting the cloud journey

1. In which stage of your business life cycle you are planning to scale for the service of cloud computing?

2. What business line you need to support and how much is the requirement os for your business.

3. How much cost effective it can be when you rent the services?

4. Which type of service is going to be beneficial for you?

5. What is the organization preferred technology, development platform and business that require for this type of service?

6. Is your organization having the capabilities to handle these services, as these services needs lot of competency to handle it as there are lots of mechanism with different layers of service present in them.

7. How much risk is associated with the data dependency when it is a kept in others infrastructure?

8. How much performance and bandwidth is required to use this type of service with comparison to the current business needs? Is the company able to cope it up with the existing bandwidth to its business needs?

There is no limit for the evaluation, and consideration should be made with respect to the current business in one is, with respect to the multiple factors with responsiveness towards stake holders and business needs, financial goals, investment capabilities, profitability, future planning, industrial growth, service providers offerings etc. One can only earn the advantage through the new technology only if they are able to do a correct feasibility study to mitigate the business need.

8. Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Despite a fact cloud computing has so many features which can be awaiting a new horizon there are also key factors which cannot be ignored. Few have been summed up below:

Lack of connectivity causes 100% downtime, whereas with traditional applications, lack of connectivity allows for some local function to continue until connectivity is restored.

The lack of industry-wide standards means that a usage surge can easily overwhelm capacity without the ability to push that usage to another provider.

"Denial of service" attacks, currently common, become easier. What's more they become harder to trace, as compromised "cloud resources" can be leveraged to launch the attacks, rather than compromised individual pc's.

Cloud computing is vulnerable to massive security exploits. Currently, when a system is broken into, only the resources of that system are compromised. With cloud computing, the damages caused by a security breach are multiplied exponentially.

By "centralising" services, cloud computing increases the likelihood that a systems failure becomes "catastrophic", rather than "isolated".

9. Conclusion

The key motive to publish this paper is to give a glimpse of understanding on cloud computing as a technology for a new era. Its potential is considered so vast that it is surely going to give up a new dimension for the generation to come. So, in the long run, most of the companies (large, mid size or small) do not want to have the overhead cost associated with running a large IT department that is solely involved in sustaining existing enterprise application. Large companies do not have the risk tolerance to start using cloud computing immediately

When your business grows, your IT needs grow too. The scalability and speed of deployment offered by cloud computing means you can expand your IT provision instantly to meet increased requirements, and you can also scale it down again whenever you want. Security is typically greatly enhanced, along with resilience, and the flexibility and responsiveness of cloud-based IT services mean that you can react quickly to a changing business environment. Waste (of both time and resources) is reduced, allowing you to effectively do more with less. This provides you a leaner, more efficient IT model, available on demand.

Moving to a cloud computing model can help your organisation to survive in a tough economic climate, equipping you with the latest business tools and giving you access to advanced technologies at a fraction of the cost of purchasing and running the same systems in-house. Check that your provider can deliver the type’s and quality of service you require, and before you know it you’ll be able to enjoy the advantages of cloud computing.