UNIT-I

1. Cloud Computing in a Nutshell

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over
the Internet.

“Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are
delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the
common use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it
contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data,
software and computation.”
Cloud Benefits

 Pay as you go
 Focus on business rather than IT
 Elasticity - Scale up and down based on business need

Cloud Models

 Deployment Models : Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Community Cloud
 Service Models : SaaS, PaaS, IaaS

Essential Characteristics

 On Demand Self-Service: Allows for provisioning of computing resources

automatically as needed.
 Broad Network Access: Access to cloud resources is over the network using standard
mechanisms provided through multi-channels.
 Resource Pooling: The vendors’ resources are capable of being pooled to serve
multiple clients using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual
resources in a dynamic way.
 Example of resources include; computation capabilities, storage and memory.
 Rapid Elasticity: Allows for rapid capability provisioning, for quick scaling out and
scaling in of capabilities. The capability available for provisioning to the client seems
to be unlimited and that it can be purchased as demanded.

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  Measured Service: Allows monitoring, control and reporting of usage. It also allows
for transparent between the provider and the client.

2. Basic Roots of Cloud Computing

We can find the basic roots of cloud computing by monitoring the different technologies
specially in hardware (virtulization, multicore chips), Internet technologies (Web services,
service oriented architecture, web 2.0), distributed computing (cluster, grids) and system
management (automatic computing, data center automation) as shown in above figure 1.1, as
we discuss one by one technology.

SOA, Web Services, Web 2.0, and Mashups

Web services (WS) open standards have appreciably throw in to advance domain of software
assimilation. WS standards have been created on top of existing ubiquitous technologies such
as HTTP, XML, thus providing a common mechanism for delivering services, making them
ideal for implementing a service-oriented architecture i.e. SOA. In SOA software resources
are packaged as "services" which is well defined self contained modules that provide by
business functionality [43]. The concept of gluing services initially focused on the enterprise
Web but gained space in the consumer realm as well especially with the advent of Web 2.0,
in the consumer Web information and services may be programmatically aggregated acting as
a building blocks of complex compositions called service mashups. Google make their
service APIs publically accessible using standard protocols such as SOAP and REST [44].

Grid & Utility Computing

Grid computing facilitates aggregation of distributed resources and transparently accesses
them. Most production grids TeraGrid, EGEE share more computable and storage resources
distributed across different administrative domains with their main intension is speeding up a
broad range of scientific application such as climate modeling, drug design and protein
analysis. Globus Toolkit is a middleware that implements several standard Grid services and
over the years has abet the deployment of several service oriented. In utility computing
environments users assign a "utility" value to their jobs, where utility is a fixed or time-
varying value that captures various QoS constraints ( deadline, satisfaction).The service
providers attempt their own utility , where said utility may directly correlate with their profit.

Hardware Virtualization
The cloud computing service providers basically provides large scale data center composed
of millions of computers. Such data centers are built to serve many consumers and host
many isolated applications. For this purpose

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hardware virtualization can be considered. The idea of hardware virtualization comes from
distributed operating system, Hardware virtualization allows running multiple operating
system call Virtual machines and software stacks on a single physical platform, Virtual
machine monitor call hypervisor is hypervisor between guest os and host os as shown in
below figure 1.2
Hardware Virtualization
Virtual machine 1, Virtual machine 2 acts as a guest operating system which is run on single
physical machine at that time hardware is virtualized such as processor, I/O devices and
memory , hypervisor Workload isolation is achieved through API by the service providers,
workload migration, VM resume, VM migration, VM pause, VM clone these capabilities also
applied using API at that time VM state observation is more important, A number of VMM
platform available to handle VMs and Physical machines. The most notables ones is
VMWare, Xen and KVM, VirtualBox. In our work we use VirtualBox to create cloud
environments and handling all VMs using API of VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a powerful x86
and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is
VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is
also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the
terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Automatic Computing
Autonomic or self-managing system rely on monitoring probes and sensors, on adaptation
engine for computing optimization based on monitoring data, and on effectors to carry out
changes on the system. IBM Automatic Computing Initiative has contributing to define four
characteristics of automatic systems such as : (i) self-configuration, (ii) self-optimization
(iii)self-healing (iv) self- protection, IBM also introduced automatic control loops of
automatic managers called MAPE-K i.e. Monitor Analyze Plan Execute-Knowledge [45],
[46].

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3. Layers and Types of Clouds

Cloud computing
Cloud computing is defined as delivery of hosted services over the Internet in an on-
demand model. A cloud provider offers resources (hardware, software or development
stacks) as services over the internet that can be consumed on a pay-as-you-use basis.

Layers Or Services Of Cloud

 Software as a service (SaaS)

 Platform as a Service (PaaS)
 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Application Cloud (a.k.a Software Cloud) - Software as a Service (SaaS)

“Software as a Service is the hosted delivery of Software that consumers can access over the
internet.” This definition is rather simplistic. By this definition web based email services such
as Gmail, Hotmail etc are SaaS applications. Two features of a SaaS application are
scalability and configurability. SaaS applications should be able to quickly scale with
demand. In mature SaaS applications, the customer should be able to customize their instance
of the software using meta-data. Depending on who you talk to multi-tenancy is yet another
feature of SaaS applications. Multiple customers share a single instance of the software and
the provider can optimize the resources to suit individual demands.
Google Apps - a SaaS version of desktop applications where the software is hosted on
google’s servers. Salesforce - SaaS CRM products.

Platform Cloud – Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service offers a complete platform and the tools to develop and deploy
applications on the platform. Typically the PaaS vendors also provide tools and other services
that enable rapid application development. Applications developed on the platform are tied to
the platform. Each platform has its own development model (can be more aptly called quirks)
and developers need to be aware of these.

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 App Engine is a PaaS offering from Google. Applications are developed and deployed on
Google’s infrastructure. Google App Engine uses big table to store data. This is an example
of platform specific development, a change that traditional developers will have to face when
they move to App Engine. It does not support relational databases.

Force.com is a PaaS offering from Salesforce. Developers can create applications that run on
the force.com platform. It includes database, workflow and UI tools. Applications can be
built using their proprietary Apex programming language or using Visual Force (a tag based
markup language). Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s platform as a service offering. It
includes an OS with .NET runtime, a database (SQL Azure) and other services that make it
easier to couple on-premise and off-premise applications.

Infrastructure Cloud – Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service is the hosted delivery of infrastructure services such as servers,

networks and other hardware to consumers. IaaS provides consumers access to on-
demand, scalable storage and compute power. Amazon EC2 is an example of IaaS
which provides scalable compute capacity in the cloud. Basically, consumers get a machine
that they customize and use. This is an example of hardware as a service.

A different way to think about the different layers of cloud computing is to think in
terms of control that the customer has has:

 With SaaS you use the application with little customization.

 With PaaS you create applications that run on the platform. You are limited by
the platform as to what applications you can create.
 With IaaS you build applications without any tie in to the platform.

Types Of Cloud

Cloud computing is usually described in one of two ways. Either based on the cloud
location, or on the service that the cloud is offering.
Based on a cloud location, we can classify cloud as:

 public,
 private,
 hybrid
 community cloud
Based on a service that the cloud is offering, we are speaking of either:

 IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)
 PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)
 SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
 or, Storage, Database, Information, Process, Application, Integration, Security,

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 Management, Testing-as-a-service

When we talk about public cloud, we mean that the whole computing infrastructure is
located on the premises of a cloud computing company that offers the cloud service. The
location remains, thus, separate from the customer and he has no physical control over the
infrastructure.
As public clouds use shared resources, they do excel mostly in performance, but are also most
vulnerable to various attacks.

Private cloud means using a cloud infrastructure (network) solely by one

customer/organization. It is not shared with others, yet it is remotely located. If the cloud is
externally hosted. The companies have an option of choosing an on- premise private cloud as
well, which is more expensive, but they do have a physical control over the infrastructure.
The security and control level is highest while using a private network. Yet, the cost
reduction can be minimal, if the company needs to invest in an on-premise cloud
infrastructure.

Hybrid cloud, of course, means, using both private and public clouds, depending on their
purpose.
For example, public cloud can be used to interact with customers, while keeping their data
secured through a private cloud.

Image 1 – Private vs Public Cloud (Image Source: TalkCloudComputing)

Community cloud implies an infrastructure that is shared between organizations, usually

with the shared data and data management concerns. For example, a community cloud can
belong to a government of a single country. Community clouds can be located both on and
off the premises.

Cloud Service

The most popular services of the cloud are infrastructure,platform, software, or storage.
The most common cloud service is that one offering data storage disks and virtual servers,
i.e. infrastructure. Examples of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) companies are Amazon,
Rackspace, Flexiscale.

If the cloud offers a development platform, and this includes operating system, programming
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language execution environment, database, and web server, the model is known as Platform-
as-a-Service (PaaS), examples of which are Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure,
Salesforce. Operating system can be frequently upgraded and developed with PaaS, services
can be obtained from diverse sources, and programming can be worked in teams
(geographically distributed).
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), finally, means that users can access various software
applications on a pay-per-use basis. As opposed to buying licensed programs, often very
expensive. Examples of such services include widely used GMail, or Google Docs.

Image 2 – Cloud Services

Public Clouds

A public cloud is basically the internet. Service providers use the internet to make resources,
such as applications (also known as Software-as-a-service) and storage, available to the
general public, or on a ‘public cloud. Examples of public clouds include Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (EC2), IBM’s Blue Cloud, Sun Cloud, Google AppEngine and Windows
Azure Services Platform.

For users, these types of clouds will provide the best economies of scale, are inexpensive to
set-up because hardware, application and bandwidth costs are covered by the provider. It’s a
pay-per-usage model and the only costs incurred are based on the capacity that is used.

There are some limitations, however; the public cloud may not be the right fit for every
organization. The model can limit configuration, security, and SLA specificity, making it
less-than-ideal for services using sensitive data that is subject to compliancy regulations.

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Private Clouds

Private clouds are data center architectures owned by a single company that provides
flexibility, scalability, provisioning, automation and monitoring. The goal of a private cloud
is not sell “as-a-service” offerings to external customers but instead to gain the benefits of
cloud architecture without giving up the control of maintaining your own data center.

Private clouds can be expensive with typically modest economies of scale. This is usually not
an option for the average Small-to-Medium sized business and is most typically put to use by
large enterprises. Private clouds are driven by concerns around security and compliance, and
keeping assets within the firewall.

Hybrid Clouds

By using a Hybrid approach, companies can maintain control of an internally managed

private cloud while relying on the public cloud as needed. For instance during peak periods
individual applications, or portions of applications can be migrated to the Public Cloud. This
will also be beneficial during predictable outages: hurricane warnings, scheduled
maintenance windows, rolling brown/blackouts.

The ability to maintain an off-premise disaster recovery site for most organizations is
impossible due to cost. While there are lower cost solutions and alternatives the lower down
the spectrum an organization gets, the capability to recover data quickly reduces. Cloud based
Disaster Recovery (DR)/Business Continuity (BC) services allow organizations to contract
failover out to a Managed Services Provider that maintains multi-tenant infrastructure for
DR/BC, and specializes in getting business back online quickly.

4. Desired Features of a Cloud

Key Features Of Cloud Computing

The most talked-about term currently in the IT industry is cloud computing. Everyone is
thinking about cloud computing from different perspectives. Some emphasize the cost
benefits associated with it, while others are still cautious about security and privacy. It
has become extremely important to understand the key defining features of cloud
computing.

1. Resource Pooling and Elasticity

In cloud computing, resources are pooled to serve a large number of customers. Cloud
computing uses multi-tenancy where different resources are dynamically allocated and
de-allocated according to demand. From the user’s end, it is not possible to know where
the resource actually resides.

The resource allocation should be elastic, in the sense that it should change
appropriately and quickly with the demand. If on a particular day the demand increases
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several times, then the system should be elastic enough to meet that additional need, and
should return to the normal level when the demand decreases.

2. Self-Service and On-demand Services

Cloud computing is based on self-service and on-demand service models. It should
allow the user to interact with the cloud to perform tasks like building, deploying,
managing, and scheduling. The user should be able to access computing capabilities as
and when they are needed and without any interaction from the cloud-service provider.
This would help users to be in control, bringing agility in their work, and to make better
decisions on the current and future needs.

3. Pricing or Per-Usage Metering and Billing

Cloud computing does not have any upfront cost. It is completely based on usage. The
user is billed based on the amount of resources they use. This helps the user to track
their usage and ultimately help to reduce cost. Cloud computing must provide means to
capture, monitor, and control usage information for accurate billing. The information
gathered should be transparent and readily available to the customer. This is necessary
to make the customer realize the cost benefits that cloud computing brings.

4. Quality of Service or Customization

Cloud computing must assure the best service level for users. Services outlined in the
service-level agreements must include guarantees on round-the-clock availability,
adequate resources, performance, and bandwidth. Any compromise on these guarantees
could prove fatal for customers.

The decision to switch to cloud computing should not be based on the hype in the
industry. A good understanding of the technology enables the user to make smarter
decisions. Knowing all the features will empower the business users to understand and
negotiate with the service providers in a proactive manner.

5. Cloud Infrastructure Management

Cloud infrastructure consists of all of the hardware and software elements needed for
cloud computing, including:

 Compute (server)

 Networking

 Storage

 Virtualization resources

Cloud infrastructure types usually also include a user interface (UI) for managing
these virtual resources.
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Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, is a prominent and accessible example of this
model. With IaaS, a team or enterprise acquires the computing infrastructure it needs
over the Internet, including computing power (whether on physical or, more likely,
virtual machines), storage and plenty of related needs such as load balancers and
firewalls. They do this in lieu of provisioning and managing their own physical
infrastructure. Instead, they lease the resources they need from the IaaS provider.

While this is a well-known example, cloud infrastructure, or cloud architecture,

encompasses a larger range of platforms and environments, including private and
hybrid clouds.

VMware Cloud Operations on AWS_CTA1 (2)

VMware vRealize Operations Cloud Solution Overview

What is cloud infrastructure management?

Cloud infrastructure management comprises the processes and tools needed to

effectively allocate and deliver key resources when and where they are required. The
UI, or dashboard, is a good example of such a tool; it acts as a control panel for
provisioning, configuring and managing cloud infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure
management is useful in delivering cloud services to both:

Internal users, such as developers or any other roles that consume cloud resources.

External users, such as customers and business partners.

Why cloud infrastructure management?

Cloud infrastructure management is a must for achieving the significant promise of

cloud computing overall. Properly managed and optimized, the cloud offers
enterprises greater flexibility and scalability for their applications and infrastructure,
while keeping costs under control. Because organizations and end users consume
virtual resources via the cloud—and can even pay for these resources on an as-
needed basis—they minimize the costs required to buy and maintain the physical
infrastructure these virtual resources mirror.

That said, without appropriate visibility, monitoring and governance, cloud

computing costs can increase unnecessarily. A typical scenario would be an engineer
who leaves a cloud development environment up and running 24/7, even if they only
need it for several hours of work. In a pay-as-you-go model—which is common in
Infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms—that kind of waste can lead to runaway cloud
bills.

Cloud infrastructure management is becoming increasingly important as cloud

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strategies continue to evolve into multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models. In these
more distributed infrastructure approaches, enterprises must allocate and manage
resources not just from a single shared pool or platform, but across multiple
heterogeneous environments. Cloud infrastructure management interface (CIMI), an
open standard API, can help streamline this management through a system called
Representational State Transfer (REST).

What does cloud infrastructure management do?

Cloud infrastructure management is the discipline, backed by technology tools, that

brings appropriate oversight to cloud usage. It enables businesses to create,
configure, scale and retire cloud infrastructure as needed.

Cloud infrastructure management is like a command center or central nervous

system for cloud environments. Cloud infrastructure management allows for
maximized operational flexibility and agility while maintaining cost efficiencies, by
providing the capabilities needed to securely manage consolidated resources.

Cloud infrastructure management is ultimately what makes the potential of multi-

cloud and hybrid cloud strategies both attainable and sustainable. Without it, these
distributed infrastructure models create operational complexity that is challenging
for people to manage manually on their own. Effective cloud infrastructure
management allows even smaller teams to deliver web-scale services.

Cloud infrastructure management tools

Cloud infrastructure management tools give engineers and other IT professionals the
means to manage the day-to-day operations of their cloud environments.

While cloud providers often offer their native management controls, they usually
only enable control over their particular platform and services. Third-party cloud
management tools typically promise a “360-degree view” and management
capabilities across all environments, which may be necessary in multi-cloud and
hybrid cloud environments.

In either scenario, cloud infrastructure management tools offer some combination of

the following features:

Provisioning and configuration: Developers, systems engineers and other IT

professionals use these tools to set up and configure the hardware and software
resources they need. This would include:

Spinning up a new server

Installing an operating system or other software

Allocating storage resources and other cloud infrastructure needs

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This also includes features for enabling and managing self-service provisioning, in
which end users use a dashboard or other mechanisms for standing up their own
resources as needed, based on predetermined rules.

Visibility and monitoring: Cloud infrastructure management tools allow operators to

“see” their environments. More importantly, they include or integrate with
monitoring tools that:

Check system health

Deliver real-time alerts and notifications

Create reporting and analytics

Resource allocation: Related to cost optimization, resource allocation features enable

granular control over how users consume cloud infrastructure, including self-service
provisioning. This is similar to budgeting: dividing up shared resources appropriately
and in some cases creating criteria for going over budget.

Cost optimization: Managing costs is a critical capability of cloud infrastructure

management tools. Without this component, enterprises run an increased risk of
“sticker shock” when the cloud bill arrives. Proactively monitoring costs via
strategies such as turning off unused or unnecessary resources is key to maximizing
the ROI of cloud infrastructure.

Automation: Cloud infrastructure management tools sometimes offer automation

capabilities for various operational tasks, such as configuration management, auto-
provisioning and auto-scaling.

Security: Cloud infrastructure management tools are another part of a holistic cloud
security strategy. They are one mechanism for properly configuring a cloud
provider’s native security controls based on a particular setup and needs.

Iaas is also known as Hardware as a Service (HaaS). It is one of the layers of the
cloud computing platform. It allows customers to outsource their IT infrastructures
such as servers, networking, processing, storage, virtual machines, and other
resources. Customers access these resources on the Internet using a pay-as-per use
model.

In traditional hosting services, IT infrastructure was rented out for a specific period
of time, with pre-determined hardware configuration. The client paid for the
configuration and time, regardless of the actual use. With the help of the IaaS cloud
computing platform layer, clients can dynamically scale the configuration to meet

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 changing requirements and are billed only for the services actually used.

IaaS cloud computing platform layer eliminates the need for every organization to
maintain the IT infrastructure.

IaaS is offered in three models: public, private, and hybrid cloud. The private cloud
implies that the infrastructure resides at the customer-premise. In the case of public
cloud, it is located at the cloud computing platform vendor's data center, and the
hybrid cloud is a combination of the two in which the customer selects the best of
both public cloud or private cloud.

6. IaaS provider provides the following services

Compute: Computing as a Service includes virtual central processing units and

virtual main memory for the Vms that is provisioned to the end- users.

Storage: IaaS provider provides back-end storage for storing files.

Network: Network as a Service (NaaS) provides networking components such as

routers, switches, and bridges for the Vms.

Load balancers: It provides load balancing capability at the infrastructure layer.

Infrastructure as a Service

Advantages of IaaS cloud computing layer

There are the following advantages of IaaS computing layer -

1. Shared infrastructure

IaaS allows multiple users to share the same physical infrastructure.

2. Web access to the resources

Iaas allows IT users to access resources over the internet.

3. Pay-as-per-use model

IaaS providers provide services based on the pay-as-per-use basis. The users are
required to pay for what they have used.

4. Focus on the core business

IaaS providers focus on the organization's core business rather than on IT

infrastructure.
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5. On-demand scalability

On-demand scalability is one of the biggest advantages of IaaS. Using IaaS, users do
not worry about to upgrade software and troubleshoot the issues related to hardware
components.

Disadvantages of IaaS cloud computing layer

1. Security

Security is one of the biggest issues in IaaS. Most of the IaaS providers are not able
to provide 100% security.

2. Maintenance & Upgrade

Although IaaS service providers maintain the software, but they do not upgrade the
software for some organizations.

3. Interoperability issues

It is difficult to migrate VM from one IaaS provider to the other, so the customers
might face problem related to vendor lock-in.

Some important point about IaaS cloud computing layer

IaaS cloud computing platform cannot replace the traditional hosting method, but it
provides more than that, and each resource which are used are predictable as per the
usage.

IaaS cloud computing platform may not eliminate the need for an in-house IT
department. It will be needed to monitor or control the IaaS setup. IT salary
expenditure might not reduce significantly, but other IT expenses can be reduced.

Breakdowns at the IaaS cloud computing platform vendor's can bring your business
to the halt stage. Assess the IaaS cloud computing platform vendor's stability and
finances. Make sure that SLAs (i.e., Service Level Agreement) provide backups for
data, hardware, network, and application failures. Image portability and third-party
support is a plus point.

The IaaS cloud computing platform vendor can get access to your sensitive data. So,
engage with credible companies or organizations. Study their security policies and
precautions.

Top Iaas Providers who are providing IaaS cloud computing platform

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IaaS Vendor Iaas Solution Details

Amazon Web Elastic, Elastic The cloud computing platform pioneer,

Services Compute Cloud Amazon offers auto scaling, cloud
(EC2) MapReduce, monitoring, and load balancing features as
Route 53, Virtual part of its portfolio.
Private Cloud, etc.

Netmagic Netmagic IaaS Netmagic runs from data centers in Mumbai,

Solutions Cloud Chennai, and Bangalore, and a virtual data
center in the United States. Plans are
underway to extend services to West Asia.

Rackspace Cloud servers, The cloud computing platform vendor

cloud files, cloud focuses primarily on enterprise-level hosting
sites, etc. services.

Reliance Reliance Internet RIDC supports both traditional hosting and

Communications Data Center cloud services, with data centers in Mumbai,
Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai. The
cloud services offered by RIDC include IaaS
and SaaS.

Sify Sify IaaS Sify's cloud computing platform is powered

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 Technologies by HP's converged infrastructure. The vendor
offers all three types of cloud services: IaaS,
PaaS, and SaaS.

Tata InstaCompute InstaCompute is Tata Communications' IaaS

Communications offering. InstaCompute data centers are
located in Hyderabad and Singapore, with
operations in both countries.

7. Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers

Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a runtime environment. It allows programmers to easily

create, test, run, and deploy web applications. You can purchase these applications from a cloud
service provider on a pay-as-per use basis and access them using the Internet connection. In PaaS,
back end scalability is managed by the cloud service provider, so end- users do not need to worry
about managing the infrastructure.

PaaS includes infrastructure (servers, storage, and networking) and platform (middleware,
development tools, database management systems, business intelligence, and more) to support the
web application life cycle.

Example: Google App Engine, Force.com, Joyent, Azure.

PaaS providers provide the Programming languages, Application frameworks, Databases, and
Other tools:

1. Programming languages

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PaaS providers provide various programming languages for the developers to develop the
applications. Some popular programming languages provided by PaaS providers are Java, PHP,
Ruby, Perl, and Go.

2. Application frameworks

PaaS providers provide application frameworks to easily understand the application development.
Some popular application frameworks provided by PaaS providers are Node.js, Drupal, Joomla,
WordPress, Spring, Play, Rack, and Zend.

3. Databases

PaaS providers provide various databases such as ClearDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis to
communicate with the applications.

4. Other tools

PaaS providers provide various other tools that are required to develop, test, and deploy the
applications.

Advantages of PaaS

There are the following advantages of PaaS -

1) Simplified Development

PaaS allows developers to focus on development and innovation without worrying about
infrastructure management.

2) Lower risk

No need for up-front investment in hardware and software. Developers only need a PC and an
internet connection to start building applications.

3) Prebuilt business functionality

Some PaaS vendors also provide already defined business functionality so that users can avoid
building everything from very scratch and hence can directly start the projects only.

4) Instant community

PaaS vendors frequently provide online communities where the developer can get the ideas to
share experiences and seek advice from others.

5) Scalability

Applications deployed can scale from one to thousands of users without any changes to the
applications.

Disadvantages of PaaS cloud computing layer

1) Vendor lock-in

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One has to write the applications according to the platform provided by the PaaS vendor, so the
migration of an application to another PaaS vendor would be a problem.

2) Data Privacy

Corporate data, whether it can be critical or not, will be private, so if it is not located within the
walls of the company, there can be a risk in terms of privacy of data.

3) Integration with the rest of the systems applications

It may happen that some applications are local, and some are in the cloud. So there will be
chances of increased complexity when we want to use data which in the cloud with the local data.

Popular PaaS Providers

The below table shows some popular PaaS providers and services that are
provided by them -

Providers Services

Google App Engine App Identity, URL Fetch, Cloud storage client
(GAE) library, Logservice

Salesforce.com Faster implementation, Rapid scalability, CRM

Services, Sales cloud, Mobile connectivity, Chatter.

Windows Azure Compute, security, IoT, Data Storage.

AppFog Justcloud.com, SkyDrive, GoogleDocs

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Openshift RedHat, Microsoft Azure.

Cloud Foundry Data, Messaging, and other services.

from VMware

8. Challenges and Risks:

Top Five Challenges of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is steadily gaining acceptance within businesses. It is predicted that by
2018, 59% of the cloud workloads will be generated from Software as a Service (Saas)
Cloud Computing has already started to revolutionise the way we store and access data. We
currently see smartphone applications use cloud computing technology to allow users to store
and access data they previously couldn’t on a smart device.
Although cloud computing is on its way to becoming a huge success and whilst it is clear
there is a lot of business value, there are reservations amongst some CIOs about using some
cloud technologies. Let’s explore some of the challenges and concerns.

1. Security & Privacy

Security is a great concern for CIOs when moving their data to the cloud. Although security
in the cloud is generally reliable and proficient, CIOs need to know that the cloud provider
they chose to work with has a fully secure cloud environment.
CIOs are becoming more reluctant to hand over important data to a third party provider. With
the growth in data breaches and the potential financial penalties and loss of reputation for
companies who fall victim, moving your private data to an external provider is more daunting
than ever.
A well-established cloud computing vendor will ensure they have the latest sophisticated
security systems in place to defend against threats. We have put together a list of questions
below that you should ask a cloud provider.

 Where does your data reside?

 Is the data encrypted?
 How do you move data from the cloud?
 What are your security governance policies and procedures?

The cloud provider should be able to answer all the above questions in detail, so that you
know exactly where your data is stored and how they will protect your data against internal
and external threats. Moreover, how can you retrieve that data if it becomes necessary.

2. Service Quality
Service quality is often one of the most significant factors that businesses cite as a reason for
not moving their business applications to the cloud. Often businesses feel as though the SLAs
provided by the cloud providers today are not adequate to assure the requirements for running
a production application on the cloud, especially those related to availability, performance
and scalability.
According to a recent survey 43% of IT decision makers are planning to invest more into
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cloud computing this year. CIOs need assurance that the company’s data will be secure and
available, and the service reliable at all times. Ensuring maximum upkeep of the service is
paramount for the profitability and sustainability of the business. We’ve put together a list of
ten questions you should ask a provider before signing the contract;

1. What are your minimum service levels?

2. What remedies are in place when a failure occurs?
3. What disaster recovery and business continuity procedures are in place?
4. How portable is my data?
5. What is your change management process?
6. What are your infrastructure and security standards?
7. How quickly do you identify and solve problems?
8. What is your escalation process?
9. What is your exit strategy? 10.What is
your termination process?

Without proficient service quality and comprehensive answers to the above questions,
businesses will be reluctant to host their critical infrastructure within the cloud.

3. Downtime & Accessibility

Service quality doesn’t have to be compromised when your data is in the cloud. Accessing
your data when you need it is a basic requirement from many organisations. The challenge
with the cloud is that the data is accessed via an internet connection rather than a local
connection. So when the network or internet connection is down, it also means that cloud
services are also down; thus data cannot be accessed.
Performance of the cloud infrastructure can be affected by the load, environment and
number of users. Ensuring that your cloud infrastructure is resilient to outages is vital. Whilst
it is almost impossible to mitigate all server outages, a reputable provider will have robust
resilience measures in place to protect your data.

4. Access to data
Cloud-based servers do not always have the most effective or appropriate customer service
support systems. CIOs often express their concerns around data ownership and losing control
of their data when moving to the cloud, but this shouldn’t be an issue. Selecting where and
how your data is stored is an important element within the decision making process.
Integration is a problem for many organisations. Ensuring that all of the applications are able
to seamlessly integrate with one another is also a common challenge.
Important questions you should ask a cloud provider;

 How much control do I have over my data and server?

 How much time does it take to back up my data to the cloud?
 How long does it take to back up my data?
 Where does my data reside?
 How does the service provider secure my data?
 What are their audit procedures?
 What happens in the event of data corruption?
 How can I extract my data if I need to move elsewhere?

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 5. Transition to the cloud
Many cloud adoption challenges are unknown due to the fact that cloud technology is still in
its relative infancy. CIOs are challenged deciding on the best way to transition to the cloud
and finding a cloud solution that meets the aims of the businesses, whilst improving
efficiencies.
Although transitioning to the cloud is a complex and involved process, there isn’t one route to
success. CIOs must ensure that the proposed solution compliments their business model.
There are various ways businesses can transition to the cloud. Whether it’s via private, public
or hybrid technologies, identifying the right service model for your business is a vital step.
Questions that a cloud provider should ask you;

 What are your demand patterns?

 When do you get the biggest influx of data?
 How much do you expect your data to grow?
 Do you need control over the region (geographic) where your data resides?
 What is your SLA expectation?

Migrating data poses a number of risks for organization’s if not handled correctly.
Developing a data migration strategy that integrates seamlessly with the current IT
infrastructure is key to overall success.
CIOs are challenged with finding the right service model for their business. Finding a
provider that will allow you to create a customized computing environment is vital.
The first step in transitioning to the cloud is being able to identify the challenges and working
with your chosen cloud provider to navigate around these barriers in order to facilitate a
successful cloud environment for the business. Whether Public, Private or Hybrid, making
sure you ask the right questions and understand the risks for your business is imperative.

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