Click here to load reader
Upload
chuong-mai
View
827
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Everything about cloud computing. Easy explanation.
Citation preview
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 Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
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
Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
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
Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
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.
Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
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.
Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
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