Services Model Of Cloud Computing

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Situation of applications of Information Technology in business today.

The demand of using Cloud Computing to serve purposes

Overview of applications of Cloud Computing

2, Statistic

The number will reflect how Cloud Computing becomes useful and powerful in many fields.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the revenue of IT cloud services will be $72.9 billion in 2015 – a huge leap from $21.5 billion in 2010.

II. Cloud Computing and its application

1. Definition of Cloud Computing

Actually, the term "cloud computing" has just been appeared recently. However, it is not the new trend of information technology; it only synthesizes all the directions of the development of information infrastructure in recent years. In 2007, Amazon impulse the research and implementation of cloud computing. Soon after, with the participation of big corporations such as Google, Microsoft and IBM, cloud computing had a very strong development which attracts a huge investment in researching of many scientist, universities and companies of information technology. Thus, a lot of definitions of cloud computing was released by experts. However, each research group defines cloud computing by its own understanding and approaches so that it is very difficult to give the most general definition. Here are some definitions of cloud computing:

"The cloud is IT as a Service, delivered by IT resources that are independent of location" (The 451 Group, 2008)

"Cloud computing is a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ across the Internet to multiple external customers" (Gartner, 2008)

However, these companies such as Gartner, The 451 Group and IDC are not companies that specialize in IT so these definitions focus mainly on explaining what cloud computing is on the view of commerce and based on their own experience.

In the scientific and technical perspective, there are also many different definitions, of which the definition of Grance and Mell is widespread in use, they define 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". (Grance, Mell, 2011)

Although there are plenty of definitions, Cloud computing need to have some essential characteristics:

Rapid elasticity: this is the most particular characteristic of cloud computing,

2. Services model of Cloud Computing

Nowadays, many cloud computing’s suppliers provide different services for users and businesses. However, there are 3 main services of cloud computing which are Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

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3 types of Cloud Services (http://technoster.com/cloud-computing-explained)

Software as a Service – SaaS: Before cloud computing is widely known in IT circles, actually SaaS has appeared for a long time, the most popular service is email such as Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail. SaaS is a service model in which the supplier will provide its customers software as a completed service. Customers only need to choose a software application that matches their needs and run the application on the Cloud infrastructure. This service model frees users from the management of system, infrastructure and operation which will be managed and controlled by the host in order to ensure the application’s availability and stable operation. Currently, SaaS for businesses is strongly developed such as office applications of Microsoft Office 365 like internal email and communication, applications in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) of SalesForce, Amazon’s e-commerce applications.

Platform as a Service – PaaS: is a variant of SaaS, but this service model offers a platform as a service which means that a business can build their own application on the provider’s infrastructure and delivers to its customers via the host’s server. This business will not be completely free by bounds of design and technology. Some examples of PaaS are Force.com of SalesForce, Google App Engine, Yahoo Pipes.

Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS: is a service model that will provide users basic computing resources such as storage space, server, network as well as tools to manage those resources. Customer can install the operating system, deploy the applications and also connect to other components such as firewalls and load balancers. Therefore, customers have to manage operating systems, storage, applications and connections between the components; service providers manage basic infrastructure below and is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the system. Besides, one of the most popular IaaS services that businesses and organizations often use is rent a certain amount of resource for daily business operation and rent standby resource for unexpected demands. As a result, it is not necessary for businesses to invest large amount of money initially, they only need to pay the cost for the real demand. IaaS bring its customers economic efficiency, especially in the case of demand for computing and storage increased sharply in a short time, the investment in infrastructure and equipment will be wasteful; time of purchasing them will cause delay and affecting the operation of businesses.

Cloud computing provides its customers variety of models with different characteristics. Thus, the organizations can choose to use cloud computing to supplement their existing computing infrastructure (IaaS), test and develop applications (PaaS) or take advantage of existing applications (SaaS) to timely meet the needs of businesses, reduce investment and opportunity cost. On the view of management, cloud computing allows companies and firms to transfer IT outsourcing to the service provider in order to concentrate on the development of the core business.

3. Deployments Model of Cloud Computing

There are 3 types of clouds which can be used for different purposes (Masiyev, 2012):

Public cloud: All cloud services is provided by the suppliers for the customers widely through the internet. Different applications share the resource pool of computing, storage and network so the infrastructure is designed to ensure separating data between the clients. Public cloud focus on serving a large number of customers so it is able to meet the flexible computing needs and provide lower costs to the customer. Therefore, public cloud’s customers include all types of individuals and businesses whom can benefit from easily approach to high-tech and high quality applications without any up-front cost. However, the whole data is located on cloud which is managed and controlled by the provider; this make customer, especially big companies feel unsafe for their important data when using cloud service.

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Public cloud (http://www.janakiramm.net/blog/the-tenets-of-the-cloud)

Private cloud: in this type of cloud, all the platform and applications is set up for the use of only one organization or business. Private cloud can be operated by a third party and the infrastructure can be placed inside or outside the owner. Therefore, it helps businesses to maximize the ability to control all data, security and service quality. Besides, private cloud can be built and managed by the company’s IT department or they can hire a service provider to undertake this work. Thus, although the investment cost is high, this cloud allows business to control and manage its sensitive or critical data.

http://blog.esds.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/public-cloud.jpg

Public and Private cloud (http://blog.esds.co.in/while-using-public-cloud-services)

Hybrid cloud: As analyzed above, public cloud is easy to set up and use, low cost but not safety; in contrast, private cloud is more secure but costly and difficult to set up. Therefore, if these 2 clouds can be combined together, the new model will take advantage of each type of cloud. That is the idea of Hybrid cloud. On one hand, the firm will outsource all insignificant business functions, data and use public cloud to handle these data; on the other hand, business will retain control of important information simultaneously (Private cloud).

What is Hybrid Cloud Hosting

Hybrid Cloud (http://www.moderndignity.com/what-is-hybrid-cloud-hosting)

Businesses can choose to deploy the application on the Public, Private or Hybrid Cloud depending on specific demands. Each type of cloud has its strengths and weaknesses so companies need to consider carefully before choosing or they can use more than 1 model to solve different issues. The need of temporary applications can be implemented on the Public cloud because it helps the firm to avoid purchasing additional equipment for a temporary need. Similarly, the need of permanent applications should be implemented on Private or Hybrid Cloud.

2. Application of Cloud Computing

There are many applications Cloud Computing (Marinescu, 2013) such as:

Data processing application such as image processing (flickr.com), indexing, document processing, email and social network (Facebook, Twitter)

Batch processing application such as activities report, transaction and summaries of organizations, inventory management of big companies, billing and payroll process

Last but not least is applications in web access

III. Cloud Computing in Business

Is cloud computing suitable for all types of businesses? It depends on the scale of the companies and the nature of businesses. In fact, for the businesses in which data is a vital part, they should build their own operating system such as storage system of a bank. Besides, Cloud computing is probably a best solution for small businesses because they do not have to invest in initial infrastructure and have a department for management and maintenance of operating system (such as the issue of replacing the storage devices or the problem of power consumption of the system)

Benefit of using cloud computing

New business models

Less operational issues

Better use of resources

Less capital expense

Challenging for Cloud computing

Potential of using cloud computing

IV. Pros and Con of Cloud Computing

1. Advantages

Dramatically reduce the cost of new entrance (pay as you go pricing). It may also cut down the cost of system management and maintainance

The scalability and elasticity of cloud computing in organizations

Easy and fast access to resources might help the firms more agile

Cloud computing can lower IT barriers to innovation

It’s no longer depend on device and location, cloud computing allow user access the system on any device that they use from any place.

Security is improved because of the centralized database

2. Disadvantages

The biggest drawback of cloud computing is privacy of all data and information which will be stored in third party’s system

Companies may find it difficult to apply cloud computing in their infrastructure

There must be internet connection in order to use cloud computing so it relies mostly on internet’s availability and performance.

The availability of provider’s service is also a big issue of using cloud computing

V. Case study

VI. Recommendation

VIII. Conclusion