Cloud Computing – Introduction

An article by Rupak Chakraborty    4 Comments

Cloud computing is a technology which has the potential to revolutionize the IT industry and the web arena. It’s not a new concept but the coinage of the term is relatively new, we all use the cloud without ever realizing it. Let me name a few things which will help to demystify the Cloud. G-mail, Dropbox, A search engine called Kloudless, iTunes, Apple’s iCloud, blogs, Facebook apps even Facebook itself and various other social networking sites.

History

The Cloud is an archaic term for the internet, in the pristine days of the web development the Internet was referred to as the cloud primarily because of its all pervasive and all encompassing nature. As I have illustrated through the examples the universal nature of cloud computing is essential to its existence hence it has become the sine qua non of modern society.

The roots of cloud computing can be traced back to the 1960′s when John McCarthy an eminent computer scientist envisioned that the Internet can one day be used as a public utility. The pioneering idea in this field was propounded by Douglas Parkhill in his book, “The Challenges of Computer Utility”, where he envisaged that one day all of the world’s information will be controlled by 15 supercomputers. Today we have come a long way and all such dreams of these various luminaries have been realized. We have moved beyond the basic definition of the internet to integrate it with reality thereby giving it the prowess to alchemize every aspect of our lives with its Midas touch.

scalability:

Let me elucidate this arcane technology with a few parallelisms and examples. Consider your mobile recharge facility where you are free to choose your subscription for recharge and the services will be provided by the service provider accordingly. Today there is so much more you can do with your smartphone there are millions of apps to choose, hundreds of songs to download and a lot of games to play. You can change you service provider any time you like, thus you have the freedom to choose and adjust according to your needs this is in the technical jargon is referred to as “scalability”.

data abstraction:

Similarly think about the electricity grid, which provides the client with power through an extensive network of grids and wires. The consumer is not aware of how the electricity is generated or transmitted, thus he only accesses the services without going into the technical details of the process. This is known as “data abstraction“. Now consider the following example there is a start up company, which is blooming very fast, its employees are burgeoning, its profits are rising so what it needs is a greater database to store all the data about its employees not only this it requires the hardware and software and the professionals to get this job done.

elastic cloud:

This is too much to ask from a start up because new investment will drain its coffers and when hard times like the recent Financial Tsunami come knocking it won’t be able to weather it. So how do we go about solving this? I say why not designate it to a third party, yes this is where cloud service providers come in, they will provide you with their software as a service they will provide you the storage space ,the servers and the platform to carry out your business. Thus you don’t need to make a one time investment to cater to your needs. You will just need to subscribe to the cloud provider and this subscription can be adjusted according to your contracts and need of the hour this is what we call as an “elastic cloud”. This saves money, time, space and lets you concentrate on your core business more effectively. Thus cloud computing converts “licensing to leasing”.

Now let me introduce you to the holy trinity of the Cloud network, they are SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). The IaaS and SaaS together contribute to the development of PaaS through a method called “virtualization”.

SaaS

Software as a service is the most common form of cloud computing that we use, everyone of us uses it almost on a daily basis, we all download softwares from the internet. Similarly when a corporation is in need of a software for a specific period of time, for example a catering company is in need of a storage place and a database management system to synchronize and store it orders during the festive season. It would be cumbersome to buy a DBMS and storage space to maintain the orders, so the easy way out is to designate the job to a software provider. The software provider will lease its product to you as per your requirement thus it will save a lot of green bucks for you and will allow you be proficient in your core job. This is known as “enterprise cloud computing” and this helps to empower the small start ups. Hence software is being provided as a service, as a utility. This is a paradigm shift from licensing software to leasing software.

The simplest example is Facebook apps which you can use and discard according to your needs, most of us use the apps like CityVille and Farmville I myself use some less known apps like the Washington Post Social Reader, Embeepay etc.

PaaS:

Platform as a service this encompasses the two other aspects of Cloud computing, here the service provider provides the platform to the client. Thus in this “client-server” model, the provider develops the know-how, sets up the logistics and builds the infrastructure needed to provide the platform to the client. But how does the cloud provider benefit from all this, incurring such a high investment for a single client is just not done, here in comes the term “multiple tenancy”, all the clients have an access to the same software and the same resources thus the same service is provided to multiple clients and the provider rakes in the collective profit.

The easiest example of this is the Blog, Google has provided me with this blog which is a platform to write articles. In the same way Google provides this service to all its users giving rise to multiple tenancy. Similar the same case applies to G-mail. I leave it to you to complete this parallelism.

Iaas:

Infrastructure as a Service, the last block in the multi-layered cloud computing and the most important one. Setting up the necessary infrastructure involves, setting up servers, buying the necessary softwares and getting professionals to do your job. This infrastructure is the center-piece in the development of the SaaS and the PaaS. For example a payroll management company needs some extra computers to store its data only during the first two months of the year, it can’t afford to buy new computers and install them with the latest software. Enter the Messiah-The cloud provider will provide you virtual OS on its servers thus providing free desktop, free OS, free storage space. Apple’s icloud provides all these services and it’s all for free for the apple users.

All the major companies are investing heavily in this vibrant technology, and they should because this is an open sesame to achieve your ends. Amazon is today the key player in this field with AWS (Amazon Web Services) and S3 (Server Storage Space) which is predicted to rake in 750 million dollars in 2011.SaaS is set to expand to the size of $72.9 billion by 2015 as per the reasearch done by Gartner.

IBM the dethroned hero has regained some of its former glory by launching its cloud services. So have the hardware firms like HP and DELL. According to a research the start up companies are the ones to benefit most from these services some of the small firms providing cloud services are Nasuni, Salesforce.com services etc

Thus having explained all this new technology, need to mention about the Cloud expo held recently in which the major advantages of this emerging Giant was discussed. The founders of this technology believe that this is the future of the web but they are quick to add a word of caution we should not overvalue this rising star nor saturate its market in either case, this will result in the fall from grace,of the infamous internet as had happened during the “DOT-COM bubble “ of  early 2000.

Thus we must walk forward in the pure radiance of the past, look back ponder, contemplate, comprehend and then move forward if we want to realize our vision of a highly connected virtual world which is “UP IN THE AIR”