Welcome to the Cloud – An eBook On Cloud Computing Technology
Cloud OYE
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 2:Why should you move your business from in-house hosting to cloud? ……………..
Chapter 3:What is ‘as a service’? ………………………………………………………………………………………
a)Cloud Platforms
(i)Iaas
(ii)PaaS
(iii)SaaS
(iv)Now everything will be available as AaaS
b) Demystifying Cloud Myths
Chapter 4:Entering the cloud ……………………….……………………………………………………………………
a)Public
b)Private
c)Hybrid
Chapter 5:Who is using ‘Cloud’? ………………………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 6:Why Should You Move to ‘Cloud’? ……………………………………………………………………
Chapter 7:Cloud Security and Risks ……………………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 8:About CloudOYE.com ………………………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 9:Build your own cloud in < 5 mins ………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 10:Migrating Apps to Cloud with CloudOYE.com ……………………………………………………
Chapter 11:Quick Facts AboutCloudOYE …………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 12:Summary …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What this book covers
Introduction
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
It is a computing paradigm, wherein a huge cluster of systems are interconnected in a public or private network to provide highly resilient infrastructure for housing business critical applications and confidential files in a secured environment. It delivers computing services over the web and allows individuals as well as businesses to use hardware components and software applications managed by the third party service providers at remote locations.
The cloud computing facilitates easy access to resources and information from anywhere over a network with the internet connectivity. By embracing this technology, users can experience significant cost benefits as it transforms the capital-intensive data center set-up to a variable priced environment.
The technology is based on the fundamental principal of reusability of the IT capabilities. The most popular examples of cloud services are online file storage, webmail, online business applications, and social networking sites.
KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud technology is enticing various sectors across the globe owing to the following characteristics it offers to the businesses:
Why should you move your business from in-house hosting to cloud?
LET’S TAKE A QUICK GLANCE AT THE MAJOR REASONS THAT HAVE COMPELLED BUSINESSES TO MIGRATE THEIR IN-HOUSE INFRASTRUCTURE TO CLOUD
Simplicity: The cloud arrangements are simpler as compared to the complicated traditional in-house infrastructure, which requires outlay for system installation, price negotiations, approvals from the area managers, and stretched order delivery period. Cloud Hosting only requires a service request to the vendor to install the platform.
Improved Compatibility and Integration: Another important reason for migrating to cloud is the ease with which the platform can configure multiple applications to share critical business data or information. Moreover, the technology makes interoperability central to the cloud hosting service by using industry standards, such as Apache, MySQL, and PHP. This eradicates the compatibility issues that an organization may face while running its own server.
Reliability: Cloud computing is highly reliable as the model takes care of various issues, such as network failure, timeouts etc., that may slow down your productivity. Even if a business needs complete control over dedicated hosting services, infrastructure outsourcing to a cloud vendor guarantees hardware.
Economies of Scale: With the continuous flow of Big Data, workloads are substantially growing at an incredibly faster rate. Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has enabled enterprises to overcome this issue by shifting the ownership as well as management of its physical server to managed services. This enables enterprises to trim down their system implementation costs, upgradation, and reduce human interventions, which further saves time and money while improving business efficiency.
The green line in the above graph illustrates that organizations with on-premise infrastructure are either left with excess under-utilized capacity or excess service degradation. Similarly, the purple line reflects the actual demand, indicating the real benefits of adopting the cloud infrastructure to scale-up/down along with the actual demand.
Security: To protect your vulnerable data against any disruptive event, organizations are migrating to the cloud. The model ensures physical security, legal security, and network security.
Data stored in the cloud is duplicated across various physical machines to ensure security of your critical business information against any cyber threat, catastrophe, natural calamity, etc. Moreover, service providers perform due-diligence to ascertain the highest level of security.
Network Uptime: The cloud technology is based on the efficient allocation of resources in a virtualized environment to provide uninterrupted services to the users. This means, even if one of the servers within the network fails, the other connected servers continue to provide service.
Cost Savings: This is another significant reason that compels users to migrate their data & applications from on-premise hosting to cloud computing solution. The technology facilitates clients to reduce their capital expenditure on infrastructure. Moreover, cloud services allow businesses to focus their valuable time on formulating strategies to improve their products and services. Both private and public cloud hosting tenders the ability to instantly deploy as well as scale VMs in line with the business requirements.
What is ‘as a service’?
As a service refers to three service models of cloud computing that can be described as Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service. These service models reduce IT support costs, improve the security of mission-critical applications, allow users to take control over software deployment and configuration settings, and above all house, run and maintain storage, hardware servers and networking components. The purpose is to streamline the functionalities of IT infrastructure without making compromises on the storage, accessibility and running of critical business applications.
I.Cloud Platforms
The prolific cloud computing has four service models, namely:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Now everything will be available as AaaS
Let’s start our discussion with the foremost service delivery model:
1. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Accelerates growth and deliver new revenue streams
Infrastructure-as-a-Service is a standardized and highly automated cloud computing lay
er, where an enterprise uses a pay-as-you-go infrastructure from a service provider. This model help businesses to slash down cost on hardware procurement, reduces ROI risk, and simplifies and automate scaling. It provides swift provisioning of storage capacity, virtual-machine disk image library, processing, networks, and other fundamental computing resources over a network. IaaS clouds often delivers additional resources like firewalls, IP addresses, load balancers, software bundles, and virtual local area networks (VLANs).
How Businesses Can Benefit from IaaS?
There is a fine difference in the perceived benefits of IaaS cloud by the SMB and enterprise sectors. SMBs consider IaaS for real cloud advantages like: higher uptime, usage-based payments and low capital investments. On the other hand, large enterprises observe benefits on the operational side like: reduced risk of technology obsolescence, and capability to focus on core business initiatives.
Lower TCO:IaaS enables IT services to be delivered as a subscription service, eradicating up-front investments and trimming down operational costs. This enables businesses to move from a CAPEX to OPEX-based business model.
High Scalability:IaaS allow businesses to easily scale up/down to respond to changing market demands. Businesses subscribing IaaSsolution need not to invest in IT software, hardware, and personnel every time their business has to change scale. The resources can be accessed from anywhere, provided you have internet connectivity.
Boosts Focused Approach:IaaS solutions can be provisioned in minutes over the network, providing substantial amount of control to businesses over required specifications to meet changing demands. On demand provisioning of IaaS services, help businesses to shift their focus from IT infrastructure to core competencies and business success.
Metered Services:Infrastructure-as-a-Service model eliminates the need of investing intoassets and services by allowing businesses to pay for the services holistically tailored to meet their business needs. Each infrastructure component is provided as a service, such as server-as-a-service, hardware-as-a-service, etc. which adds flexibility to those who are looking for specific services.
Why Businesses are Moving to IaaS?
The below graph explicitly describes the major reasons for businesses moving to IaaS.
2.Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Helping Organizations to Achieve the Fastest Time to Market
Platform-as-a-Service is a standardized, shared and highly scalable application development and deployment platform that is delivered as a service. This cloud service delivery model includes computing platform (hardware architecture, runtime libraries, and operating systems), and a solution stack (middleware, database, and applications) as well as development, security, integration, and management capabilities, all delivered as a service. It enables businesses to merge existing applications on the same integrated platform, and help building new apps with the minimum cost of management and ownership.
How Businesses Can Benefit from PaaS?
PaaS solutions include tools, APIs, and templates that make it easier and convenient for application developers to build, run, test and manage their software. PaaS services are available on demand, with the provider responsible for managing and maintaining hardware and software that supports PaaS functionality.
Lower TCO:Companies using PaaS have reported operational savings of up to 50% when compared to having individual project teams managing their own technology stacks. When businesses opt for PaaS services they don’t have to invest on expensive setups, software licensing, maintenance, training and support, which apparently reduces total cost of ownership.
On demand service:Users can use platform according to their business requirement on a subscription basis, and can step back when they want to discontinue the service.
Decreased Development and Deployment Time: Easily replicable, pre-installed applications allow developers to minimize routine coding, which significantly reduces time to deployment. Application instances can be quickly deployed expeditiously, and can be reviewed in a real-time.
Boosts Focused Approach:With PaaS, businesses are not required to purchase hardware or need to possess technical expertise to manage it, which helps them to focus on application development.
Greater Flexibility:PaaS enables businesses to have control over the tools and customize a platform that meets their specific requirements. Also, it allows users to pick and choose the features they consider necessary for developing an application.
Fosters Innovation and Collaboration:PaaS platform has an extensive library of images, which help developers to focus on innovative solutions. With just internet connection, developers across various locations can work together on the same application build.
3.Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Accelerating Business Growth
How Businesses Can Benefit from SaaS?
The popularity of SaaS is progressively increasing because it streamlines deployment process and reduces down overall customer acquisition costs. Here are some of the potential benefits that are appealing businesses:
Lower Initial Costs - SaaS applications are basically subscription-based; hence no license fees need to be paid by the user. Everything is proficiently managed by the SaaS vendor, which means reduced IT costs for hardware, software, and the human resource needed to manage it completely.
Easier Upgrades - SaaS vendors are completely responsible for the upgrade process. New versions and feature improvements are deployed to the hosted applications. No client applications on end-user desktops are upgraded. SaaSvendors usually offer two to four foremost upgrades per year together with other updates that the user gets routinely.
Instant Integration - Through multi-tenant architectures, SaaS service providers can seamlessly scale to meet customer varying demand. They also offer customized capabilities to match the specific needs of the businesses. Plus, many even provide APIs that let users seamlessly integrate with existing ERP systems or other related business productivity systems.
Time-to-Market - SaaS vendors receipt charge for providing the software, hardware and network infrastructure at the data center. Apart from this, SaaS applications are generally have the scope of partial customization for features. As a conclusion, there will be zero interruption and that generates the requirement for in-house IT organizations and it helps for performing and develops, enhance and deploy applications.
Easy Up-gradation - SaaS vendors monitor and maintain the upgrade process. Increasing features and new releases are positioned centrally for the applications to be hosted. End-user desktops and client applications are not required to be upgraded. Generally SaaS vendors upgrade applications two to four times annually along with numerous minor updates. User can get these updates automatically. SaaS-based applications users can avail and use the latest version of the software provided by the vendor.
4.Now everything will be available as AaaS
‘Analytics as a Service’ or ‘AaaS’ fundamentally helps an enterprise to make substantial in cost savings as well as conserve critical business time. Such central resources are strategically diverted towards data analysis within enterprises. This examination need not necessarily involve a black-box approach; that is why white-box analysis is always recommended.
How Businesses Can Benefit from AaaS?
Let us now have a brief look at a few key benefits of AaaS
Providers involved in the Analytics as a Service feature offer excellent data collaboration tools. These can be used for the following business functions
II.Demystifying Cloud Myths
Cloud computing has taken the industry by a storm. Still people have several misconceptions about cloud and the way it works. Thus, there are numerous factual and indelicate statements regarding cloud computing that have been moving around.
Hosting providers are offering a vast range of cloud services and solutions to the clients. Many people think that these hoard of cloud services and solutions are creating the situations fuzzier for the users. They are a
ctually bemused regarding which service or solutions they should actually opt.
Here is a small effort to demystify cloud computing myths. Have a look which are the popular cloud myths still floating:
Budget Public Cloud - Affordable public cloud is on the pipeline but it is not guaranteed that you always get at the low cost. Public cloud allows the shifting of existing hardware requirements with business suited applications. With public cloud you can be rest assured of backup facilities and data storage. It is fact that your public cloud can be very costly at times if not observed properly. Hence, try to understand the cloud strategy before your consideration of the hosted service solutions.
Security Issues with Cloud - Cloud is not always secured. Earlier, there were several instances of data loss and outage. Thus cloud service hosting providers have put lots of efforts. These days cloud hosting providers are cautious and they have created the virtual setup to secure data such as an in-house environment. Lots of people still believe that ‘private cloud’ is secured than ‘public cloud’ and it is a myth.
