Cloud Computing

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered
as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The “cloud” in cloud computing can be
defined as the set of hardware, networks, storage, services, and interfaces that combine to
deliver aspects of computing as a service. Cloud services include the delivery of software,
infrastructure, and storage over the Internet. Most of the cloud computing has following
features:

 It's virtual
 It can be secure
 It's flexible and scalable
 It can be affordable
 It can be secure and affordable
Most IT departments are forced to spend a significant portion of their time on frustrating
implementation, maintenance, and upgrade projects that too often don’t add significant value to the
company’s bottom line. Increasingly, IT teams are turning to cloud computing technology to minimize
the time spent on lower-value activities and allow IT to focus on strategic activities with greater
impact on the business

In a cloud computing system, there's a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to
do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make
up the cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The
only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface
software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of the rest.
Some of the advantages of cloud based services are:

 Proven Web-services integration. By their very nature, cloud computing technology is much
easier and quicker to integrate with your other enterprise applications (both traditional software
and cloud computing infrastructure-based), whether third-party or homegrown.

 World-class service delivery. Cloud computing infrastructures offer much greater scalability,
complete disaster recovery, and impressive uptime numbers.

 No hardware or software to install: a 100% cloud computing infrastructure. The beauty of cloud
computing technology is its simplicity… and in the fact that it requires significantly fewer capital
expenditures to get up and running.

 Faster and lower-risk deployment. You can get up and running in a fraction of the time with a
cloud computing infrastructure. No more waiting months or years and spending millions of dollars
before anyone gets to log into your new solution. Your cloud computing technology applications
are live in a matter of weeks or months, even with extensive customization or integration.

 Support for deep customizations. Some IT professionals mistakenly think that cloud computing
technology is difficult or impossible to customize extensively, and therefore is not a good choice
for complex enterprises. The cloud computing infrastructure not only allows deep customization
and application configuration, it preserves all those customizations even during upgrades. And
even better, cloud computing technology is ideal for application development to support your
organization’s evolving needs.

 Empowered business users. Cloud computing technology allows on-the-fly, point-and-click

customization and report generation for business users, so IT doesn’t spend half its time making
minor changes and running reports.

 Automatic upgrades that don’t impact IT resources. Cloud computing infrastructures put an end
to a huge IT dilemma: If we upgrade to the latest-and-greatest version of the application, we’ll be
forced to spend time and resources (that we don’t have) to rebuild our customizations and
integrations. Cloud computing technology doesn’t force you to decide between upgrading and
preserving all your hard work, because those customizations and integrations are automatically
preserved during an upgrade.
CLOUD AT A GLANCE
Emergence/ History of Cloud Computing
One of the first milestones for cloud computing was the arrival of Salesforce.com in 1999, which
pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple website. The services firm
paved the way for both specialist and mainstream software firms to deliver applications over the
internet.

The next development was Amazon Web Services in 2002, which provided a suite of cloud-based
services including storage, computation and even human intelligence through the Amazon
Mechanical Turk.

Then in 2006, Amazon launched its Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) as a commercial web service that
allows small companies and individuals to rent computers on which to run their own computer
applications.

Another big milestone came in 2009, as Web 2.0 hit its stride, and Google and others started to offer
browser-based enterprise applications, though services such as Google Apps.

The most important contribution to cloud computing has been the emergence of "killer apps" from
leading technology giants such as Microsoft and Google. When these companies deliver services in a
way that is reliable and easy to consume, the knock-on effect to the industry as a whole is a wider
general acceptance of online services.

Then came mature virtualization technologies in 2009-tilldate that changed landscape of cloud
computing. Private, Public and hybrid cloud were dominant cloud types in Enterprise Level. Server
and Storage Consolidation were major works in the cloud industry.

Cloud Based Services

 Hosted Desktops: The hosted virtual desktop is just like normal PC desktop, except that
applications, data and user profile are stored in a secure data center. It is designed to replace
traditional desktop PC environment, and provides the same level of functionality and
performance as normal PC.

 Hosted Websites/ Emails: Websites and emails are hosted in cloud based servers. The
main advantages of hosted websites and emails is the saving of cost used for procuring
new servers, managing servers, power system, experts, maximum uptime, scalability and
security.
 Hosted Telephony: Hosted telephony is the way of taking all the telephone
infrastructure from on premises to some cloud based telephony system. The advantages
of this technique are that it is easy for the service provider to upgrade the system,
there’s very little local infrastructure needed at your office location and it provides good
 flexibility especially across multiple location. Hosted PBX companies handle call routing,
or switching, at their own location and are responsible for managing all of the PBX
equipment and software involved in the virtual PBX service. Hosted PBX services can
function over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) over the Internet (hosted
IP PBX via Internet telephony, or VoIP), or over a combination of the two. Because it is a
hosted system, there's no high initial cost for buying the expensive hardware. There's
also never an upgrade cost for changing hardware. Unlike traditional PBX services,
hosted PBX makes advanced business technology available for even small businesses.

 Cloud Storage: Cloud storage is a service model in which data is maintained, managed
and backed up remotely and made available to users over a network (typically the
Internet). Availability and Scalability are the major advantages of using cloud based
storage. By availability means, any user can access their data residing in cloud from any
location via Internet. By Scalability means, user can increase their storage space as per
need and load by paying they use the storage quantity.

Grid Computing:
Grid computing is a computer network in which each computer's resources are shared with
every other computer in the system. Processing power, memory and data storage are all
community resources that authorized users can tap into and leverage for specific tasks. A grid
computing system can be as simple as a collection of similar computers running on the
same operating system or as complex as inter-networked systems comprised of every
computer platform you can think of. A grid computer is connected through a super-fast
network and share the devices like disk drives, mass storage, printers and RAM.
In general, a grid computing system requires:
 At least one computer, usually a server, which handles all the administrative duties
for the system: This type of computer are sometimes referred as a control node. All
the administrative tasks required for computing are handled by this control node. The
control node must prioritize and schedule tasks across the network. It's the control
node's job to determine what resources each task will be able to access. The control
node must also monitor the system to make sure that it doesn't become overloaded.
 A network of computers running special grid computing network software: These
computers act both as a point of interface for the user and as the resources the
system will look into for different applications.
 A collection of computer software called middleware: The purpose of middleware is
to allow different computers to run a process or application across the entire network
of machines. Middleware is the workhorse of the grid computing system. Without it,
communication across the system would be impossible.
 Grid Vs Cloud Computing
Parameter Grid computing Cloud computing
Goal Collaborative sharing of Use of everything as a service
resources
Level of abstraction Low (more details) High (eliminate details)
Degree of scalability Normal High
Multitask Yes Yes
Transparency Low High
Time to Not real-time Real-time services
Requests type Few but large allocation Lots of small allocation

Virtualization Not a necessity Vital

Portal accessible Via a DNS system Only using IP (no DNS
registered)
Transmission Suffered from internet Was significantly fast
delays
Security Low (grid certificate High (Virtualization)
service)
Infrastructure Low level command High level services (SaaS)
Operating System Any standard OS A hypervisor (VM) on which
multiple OSs run
Ownership Multiple Single
Interconnection network Mostly internet with Dedicated, high-end with low
latency and low latency and high bandwidth
bandwidth
Service negotiation SLA based SLA based
User management Decentralized and also Centralized or can be
Virtual delegated to
Organization (VO)-based third party
Resource management Distributed Centralized/Distributed
Allocation/Scheduling Decentralized Both
centralized/decentralized
Failure management Limited (often failed Strong (VMs can be easily
tasks/applications are migrated
restarted) from one node to other)
Pricing of services Dominated by public good Utility pricing, discounted for
or privately assigned larger Customers
Type of service CPU, network, memory, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS,
bandwidth, device, Everything as a service
storage,…
Example of real world SETI, BOINC, Amazon Web Service (AWS),
Folding@home, Google apps
GIMPS
Response Time Can’t be serviced at a time Real-time
and need
to be scheduled
Critical object Computer resource Service
Number of users Few More
Resource Limited (because hardware Unlimited
are limited)
Configuration Difficult as users haven’t Very easy to configure
administrator privilege
Future Cloud computing Next generation of internet
Components of Cloud Computing

a. The Client- The End User: Everything ends with the client. The hardware components,
the application and everything else developed for cloud computing will be used in the
client. Client systems has some application installed which enables them to connect to
cloud software or some infrastructure.
b. The Service (Functions in Cloud Computing): Cloud computing always has a purpose.
One of the main reasons cloud computing become popular is due to the adoption of
businesses as the easier way to implement business processes. It has some standard
service or procedure of interfacing/ connecting client computers with cloud
infrastructure. Cloud computing is all about processes and the services launched
through cloud computing always has to deal with processes with an expected output.
c. The Application: Application is the core of what users are going to use. It is the mainstay
of what users are wanting for their daily operations. Application are normally a program
that users use to connect cloud infrastructure either with web interface or any
application interface. In simple way, we can define application as a software that end
user uses to do their operations in which their main data resides in cloud.
d. The Platform: The platform is where all the applications and services are based upon.
The platform usually comes as the programming language such as Ajax (Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML) or Ruby on Rails. In simple way, the platform is the cloud
infrastructure where it provides application and service the base to operate. It is the
environment provided by cloud vendors which enables all the application to operate and
services to operate.
e. The Storage: The last and most critical components in cloud computing is the storage.
Everything that the application knows and the functions that could be provided by
service are possible through storage. Modern day cloud storage is based on highly
virtualized infrastructure and has the same characteristics as cloud computing in terms
of agility, scalability, elasticity and multi-tenancy. Some cloud storage systems are small
operations, while others are so large that the physical equipment can fill up an entire
warehouse.
Cloud Computing Deployment Model

Public Cloud: This is the deployment model that most commonly described as cloud
computing. In this model, all of the physical resources are owned and operated by a
third party cloud computing provider. The provider services multiple clients that may
consist of individuals or corporations utilizing these resources through the public
Internet. Services can be dynamically provisioned and are billed based on usage alone.
This model provides the highest degree of cost savings while requiring the least amount
of overhead.

This model is best suited for business requirements wherein it is required to manage
load spikes, host SaaS applications, utilize interim infrastructure for developing and
testing applications, and manage applications which are consumed by many users that
would otherwise require large investment in infrastructure from businesses.

Private Cloud: Private cloud computing systems emulate public cloud service offerings
within an organization’s boundaries to make services accessible for one designated
organization. Private cloud computing systems make use of virtualization solutions and
focus on consolidating distributed IT services often within data centers belonging to the
company. The chief advantage of these systems is that the enterprise retains full control
over corporate data, security guidelines, and system performance. This model doesn’t
bring much in terms of cost efficiency: it is comparable to buying, building and managing
your own infrastructure. Still, it brings in tremendous value from a security point of view.
In addition to security reasons, this model is adopted by organizations in cases where
data or applications are required to conform to various regulatory standards, which may
require data to be managed for privacy and audits that govern the corporation.

Hybrid Cloud: This can be a combination of private and public clouds that support the
requirement to retain some data in an organization, and also the need to offer services
in the cloud. A company may use internal resources in a private cloud maintain total
control over its proprietary data. It can then use a public cloud storage provider for
backing up less sensitive information. At the same time, it might share computing
resources with other organizations that have similar needs. By combining the
advantages of the other models, the hybrid model offers organizations the most
flexibility.
This model is also used for handling cloud bursting, which refers to a scenario where the
existing private cloud infrastructure is not able to handle load spikes and requires a
fallback option to support the load. Hence, the cloud migrates workloads between
public and private hosting without any inconvenience to the users.

Community Cloud: In the community deployment model, the cloud infrastructure is

shared by several organizations with the same policy and compliance considerations.
This helps to further reduce costs as compared to a private cloud, as it is shared by larger
group.

A community cloud contains features of the public and private cloud models. Like a
public cloud, the community cloud may contain software, data storage, and computing
resources that are utilized by multiple organizations. Where this model differs from the
public model is that the infrastructure is only utilized by a group of organizations that are
known to each other. Similarly to a private cloud, these organizations are responsible for
the operation of their own infrastructure. The community cloud model can provide
greater cost savings than the private cloud while offering some of its security features.
This model is best suited for organizations that share common requirements such as
security or legal compliance policies. It can be managed by the member organizations or
by a third party provider.
Benefits of Using Cloud Model/ Why Switch from Traditional IT to cloud/ Goal of
Cloud Computing

 Reduced Spending on Technology Infrastructure: Moving to cloud computing

may reduce the cost of managing and maintaining your IT systems. Rather than
purchasing expensive systems and equipment for your business, you can reduce
your costs by using the resources of your cloud computing service provider. You
may be able to reduce your operating costs because
o the cost of system upgrades, new hardware and software may be included in
your contract
o you no longer need to pay wages for expert staff
o your energy consumption costs may be reduced
o There are fewer time delays.

 Globalizing Workspace/ Easy Accessibility: Globalizing your workspace or system

may add additional agility and effectiveness to your system. For example, you
have the ability to access data from home, on holiday, or via the commute to and
from work (providing you have an internet connection). If you need access to
your data while you are off-site, you can connect to your virtual office, quickly
and easily.

 Improve Flexibility and Scalability: Your business can scale up or scale down
your operation and storage needs quickly to suit your situation, allowing
flexibility as your needs change. Rather than purchasing and installing expensive
upgrades yourself, your cloud computer service provider can handle this for you.
Using the cloud frees up your time so you can get on with running your business.

 Better Resource Utilization: Using technologies such as virtualization and

distributed computing, computing resources can be used fully up to their
potentials. In cloud model, you can pay whatever you use for your operational
purpose.

 Backup and Disaster Recovery: Since all your data is stored in the cloud, backing
it up and restoring the same is relatively much easier than storing the same on a
physical device. Furthermore, most cloud service providers are usually
competent enough to handle recovery of information. Hence, this makes the
entire process of backup and recovery much simpler than other traditional
methods of data storage.
 Also adding to backup management, cloud infrastructure can be used as a very
strong disaster recovery site as they do have enough infrastructure and
technology to be a potent DR Site.

 Guaranteed Uptime and Strong Service Level Agreements (SLA): Cloud

infrastructure by nature is built for robustness and high availability. Uptime is a
major attribute for rapid popularity of cloud computing as all the services
provided by cloud vendors should be guaranteed to be working all the time.
Hence, the service level agreements between the cloud provider and customer
are supposed to be very strong in case of availability and security. By achieving
strong SLA’s, customer can operate very effectively with zero downtime.

 Helps smaller business compete: Cloud infrastructure is a global platform where

smaller and large scale business both can use the resources. Hence, smaller
business industries can be equally competent in regard to IT Infrastructure and
can focus more on their business side. By decreasing their capital expenses
(CAPex) they can move forward by using financials to business development.

Legal Issues in Cloud Computing:

 Confidentiality: Data in enterprise world is as important as anything. Placing your
data in cloud infrastructure is supposed to be vulnerable and insecure. Hence,
before and after moving to cloud infrastructure, organizations should carefully
judge whether their data is managed confidentially or not.
 Liability and responsibility: Liability and responsibility is another legal issues that
has to be addressed by cloud vendor as well as customers. It should be regularly
monitored to investigate that whether cloud vendors has performed their duties
in accordance to Service Level Agreements (SLA) or not. As is cloud definition,
customer has to ensure that cloud vendors has sufficient infrastructure, proper
backup policy, business continuity plan and all the prerequisite to host valuable
data.
 Compliance: Before customers will entrust their IT needs to managed or cloud
services, they need two things: first, assurance that cloud infrastructure is secure
and compliant, and second, visibility into their own security and compliance
stance in cloud or managed infrastructure. Cloud vendors should ensure the
security and compliance of their customer with powerful incident management
capabilities, immediate alerts about suspicious activities, and access to detailed
 forensic data. It should give its customer all the components required to deliver
the compliance and security reports and dashboards they demand.
 Data protection, safety and recovery: Data in cloud as said should be safe
enough to be trusted and protected from various attacks. Safety and protection is
not only enough for operating in cloud but it should have some standard
recovery mechanism to recover data in case of failure of system.
 Copyright and Ownership: Even though data may be residing in cloud
infrastructure in any part of the world, data should be owned by customer and it
should have legal obligation of being owned by customer themselves. Data once
migrated to the cloud data centers should be completely owned and should be
protected by some copyright. Customers should be aware of intentional
duplication of data, data being copied or any leakage of data.
 Data portability: What if customers want to shift data/ app to other cloud
vendors? Data portability is a major hurdle for any customer to migrate from on
cloud vendor to another. Is there any legal obligation of cloud vendor regarding
the move or not? What if existing cloud vendor do not allow customer to migrate
data to other provider? These questions should be clear enough for both
customer and vendor and there should be defining answer for these questions.
 Right to Audit: IT audit in cloud infrastructure is a necessity for maintaining
compliance of cloud vendor as well as customer. Before moving to the cloud, and
ideally during the procurement process, you should know your risk appetite and
how it feeds the control environment — and then determine the potential cloud
provider’s risk appetite. Security, Risk, Compliance are some of the factors that
customers need to check periodically for the risk free operations. And while
moving to cloud data centers, customers should be legally enforced to have the
right to audit their hardware, software, systems and applications.
 Termination or Suspension Contract: Cloud computing agreement can be
terminated on the account of various reasons. The contract may expire at the
end of its stipulated term or it may be terminated for default or material breach
of terms of contract. User may also want to terminate the contract to migrate to
a better or more cost effective cloud computing service. The user’s data is most
vulnerable after the termination of contract and in most cases service provider
has no legal duty or liability to handle the user’s data properly unless stipulated
otherwise in the cloud computing contract. Hence a careful steps should be
taken whenever for various reason a customer terminates the services from
cloud service provider.
Characteristics of Cloud Computing
 Service Oriented: The defining characteristics of cloud computing is the service
oriented feature. All the IT related services are hosted in cloud infrastructure.
Companies should not have to buy expensive servers, network equipment’s and
invest on expensive manpower. All they need is to subscribe to any cloud service
provider and get what they want. In this way, we can decrease our capital
expenditure and move to operate via Operating expenditure.

 Broad Network Access: Cloud Capabilities are available over the network and
accessed
through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick
client
platforms such as mobile phones, laptops and PDAs.

 On Demand: A consumer can provision computing capabilities, such as server

processing and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring
human interaction with each service’s provider. computer services such as email,
applications, network or
server service can be provided without requiring human interaction with each
service
provider. Cloud service providers providing on demand self-services include
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, IBM and Salesforce.com.
 Reliability, Elasticity and scalability: The cloud is reliable in the sense that the
infrastructure setup for cloud is robust and backed up for high availability. It is
some resilient replication and backup strategy that is targeted for huge customer
base. The cloud is elastic, meaning that resource allocation can get bigger or
smaller depending on demand. Elasticity enables scalability, which means that
the cloud can scale upward for peak demand and downward for lighter demand.
Scalability also means that an application can scale when adding users and when
application requirements change.

 Resource Pooling (Processor, Memory, and Storage): Cloud infrastructure should

have features of resource pooling i.e. resources (CPU, Memory, Disk) should be
categorized in a hierarchy as per the need of computing. Resource pooling is
mainly used for utilizing servers up to its potential. Since most of the times server
 resources are unused, we can use the concept of virtualization to pool its
resources.

 Measured Service (Pay per Use): Cloud computing resource usage can be
measured, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider
and consumer of the utilized service. Cloud computing services use a metering
capability which enables to control and optimize resource use. This implies that
just like air time, electricity or municipality water IT services are charged per
usage metrics – pay per use. The more you utilize the higher the bill. Just as
utility companies sell power to subscribers, and telephone companies sell voice
and data services, IT services such as network security management, data center
hosting or even departmental billing can now be easily delivered as a contractual
service.

 Multi Tenancy: Multi tenancy refers to a principle in IT infrastructure where a

single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client
organizations (tenants). With a multitenant architecture, a software application is
designed to virtually partition its data and configuration, and each client
organization works with a customized virtual application instance. Each customer
does its own work without interfering other customer even though they are
hosted at the same platform.
Challenges in Cloud Computing/ Security Issues
 Privacy
 Data Security
 Ownership
 RASP (Reliability, Availability, Scalability and Performance)
 Data Recovery and Backup
 Cross Country Data Migration and Portability
 Multiplatform Support
 Intellectual Property
 Misuse
 Real Time Processing
 Compliance

Distributed Computing in Grid and Cloud Computing

A distributed computing consists of multiple software components that are on multiple
computers, but run as a single system. The computers that are in a distributed system can be
physically close together and connected by a local network, or they can be geographically
distant and connected by a wide area network. A distributed system can consist of any number
of possible configurations, such as mainframes, personal computers, workstations,
minicomputers, and so on. The goal of distributed computing is to make such a network work as
a single computer.
Distributed computing, as one can imagine, is where the computing elements of a network are
spread over a large geographical area. Both cloud and grid computing are prime examples of
distributed computing architectures.

Another type of distributed computing is known as grid computing. Grid computing consists of
many computers operating together remotely and often simply using the idle processor power
of normal computers. Grid provides the sharing of:

 Computational resources
 Storage elements
 Specific applications
 Equipment
 Other
While there are many similarities between grid and cloud computing, it is the differences that
matter most. Grid computing is better suited for organizations with large amounts of data being
requested by a small number of users (or few but large allocation requests), whereas cloud
computing is better suited to environments where there are a large number of users requesting
small amounts of data (or many but small allocation requests).

Cloud computing is basically a sales and distribution model for various types of resources over
the internet, while distributed computing can be identified as a type of computing, which uses a
group of machines to work as a single unit to solve a large scale problem. Distributed computing
achieves this by breaking the problem up to simpler tasks, and assigning these tasks to
individual nodes.

Compared to other distributed systems such as grids or clusters, cloud computing solutions give
enterprises significantly more flexibility. They can dispense with IT infrastructures of their own
and only have to pay for the resources and services they actually use (“pay-per-use”/ “pay as
you go”). These can be dynamically adapted to changed business requirements and processes
with the help of virtualization technologies and service oriented, distributed software systems.