Cloud Computing

UNIT I:
CLOUD COMPUTING FOUNDATION Introduction to Cloud Computing - Cloud Computing
Basics - History of Cloud Computing - Importance of Cloud Computing - Characteristics - Move
to Cloud Computing: Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing - Nature of the Cloud - Technologies in
Cloud Computing - Migrating into the Cloud - Seven-step Model. Types of Cloud - Cloud
Infrastructure - Cloud Application Architecture. Working of Cloud Computing: Trends in
Computing - Cloud Service Models - Cloud Deployment Models

Unit II:
CLOUD COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE Cloud Computing Technology: Cloud Lifecycle
Model - Role of Cloud Modeling and Architecture - Reference Model for Cloud Computing-
Cloud Industry Standard. Cloud Architecture: Developing Holistic Cloud Computing Reference
Model - Cloud System Architecture. Cloud Modeling and Design: Basic Principles - Model for
Federated Cloud Computing- Cloud Eco System - Cloud Governance.

Unit III:
VIRTUALIZATION Definition of Virtualization - Adopting Virtualization -Types of
Virtualization - Virtualization Architecture and Software - Virtual Clustering - Introduction to
Cluster - Virtualization Application - Pitfalls of Virtualization. Grid, Cloud and Virtualization:
Virtualization in Grid - Virtualization in Cloud. Virtualization and Cloud Computing : Anatomy of
Cloud Infrastructure - Anatomy of Cloud Computing - Virtual Infrastructures - CPU Virtualization
- Network and Storage Virtualization

Unit IV:
DATA STORAGE AND SECURITY Data Storage: Introduction to Enterprise Data Storage -
Data Storage Management - File Systems - Cloud Data Stores - Using Grids for Data Storage.
Cloud Storage: Overview of Cloud Storage - Data Management for Cloud Storage - Provisioning
Cloud Storage - Data-intensive Technologies for Cloud Computing. Risks in Cloud Computing:
Introduction - Risk Management - Cloud Impact - Enterprise Wide Risk Management - Types of
Risks in Cloud Computing . Data Security in Cloud: Introduction - Current State - Homo Sapiens
and Digital Information - Cloud, Digital Persona and Data Security - Content Level Security (CLS).

Unit V:
CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES Cloud Services: Cloud Types and Services - Software as a
Service (SaaS) - Platform as a Service (PaaS)- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Other Clouds
Services . Cloud Computing at Work: Cloud Service Development Tool -
Management/Administrative Services. Tools and Technologies for Cloud - Parallel Computing -
Cloud Computing Application Platform - Cloud Computing Platform - Tools for Building Cloud -
Programming in Cloud. Cloud Tools: VMWare – Eucalyptus – CloudSim – OpenNebula – Nimbus
- Microsoft Cloud Service: Windows Azure Platform - Google Cloud Applications - Amazon Cloud
Services
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER

TO CLOUD
1
COMPUTING
1.1 Cloud Computing Basics

1.2 History of Cloud Computing

1.3 Importance of Cloud Computing in the Current Era

1.4 Characteristics of Cloud Computing

1.5 What Cloud Computing Really Is?

4 INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING

1.1 CLOUD COMPUTING BASICS

1.1.1 Introduction
Originally, cloud computing was a hazy term, in the sense computing would occur in remote
locations without the need for human intervention. Certainly, there is no necessity for the users
to know how the computers, their software or the network are functioning.
In the real world, computing developed progressively and can be viewed in two stages. One
is more centralized and the other is the desktop. The limitations of centralized computing did not
give users enough control and was inflexible. Distributed computing made every user a system
administrator but it was still inefficient. In the last few years, as the cost of computing power
continued to decrease, the cost of manpower to implement and manage computer systems have
increased. Centralized computing facility needs more version upgradation to reach the cloud
computing stage. Some computer scientists have suggested a vast grid of computers attached via
the Internet, whose power is combined for large-scale tasks, when needed. In certain cases, large
numbers of computing systems are used for particular tasks. Other scientists have recommended
a computing utility which would offer just as much computing power as a society needs in an
on-demand basis, as in the case of electricity.
Therefore, Google and Amazon web users have built enormous data centres for their own
use. They have realized that they can allow others to access these data centres at reasonable
prices. Thus began the era of cloud computing.

1.2 HISTORY OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing comprises of various phases, which include grid and utility computing,
application service providers (ASP) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Though the concept of
delivering computing resources through a universal network was started in the 1960s, intergalactic
computer network was introduced by J.C.R. Licklider. His dream was for everyone on the earth
to be connected with anyone and be able to access programs and data at any location from any
place. In 1960, the famous scientist John McCarthy predicts that the computation being available
as pubic service. In 1960, the cloud computing evolved along with numbers of lines, Web 2.0
being the most recent development. Salesforce.com was the first cloud computing to have arrived
in the 1999, which pioneered the idea of delivering enterprise applications through a simple
website.
The concepts behind the cloud computing are not new, whereas all these concepts are really
needed for the current trends. The influence and degree of the cloud have changed enormously
from what it was in the commencement phase. Over time as the skills and business environments
have progressed, the status quo of cloud computing has become untouched. The principle behind
the cloud computing has not changed but the users approach have changed immensely.
There is no doubt that this type of processing power is certainly attracted by large compa-
nies that have an unappeasable hunger for the ability to process tasks such as crunching records
and providing users with Web 2.0 functionality. To a greater extent, information is out there in
the digital sphere and there is so much of it that desires to be structured in ways that we can fully
understand and use it to our advantage.
 1.3 IMPORTANCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN THE CURRENT ERA 5

The beginning of what was recognized as the concept of cloud computing can be traced
back to the mainframe days of the 1960s, when the idea of ‘utility computing’ was propounded by
MIT computer scientist and Turing’s medal winner John McCarthy. Utility computing ended up
becoming a thing of large business units like IBM. The concept was so simple that the computing
power could be wrecked down as a metered service for the business, similar to how telephone
companies operate for their consumers.
‘The Computers of Tomorrow’ is an article which was published in Atlantic Monthly in
1964 by Martin Greenberger. He envisioned a future in which computers would become super
powerful worldwide and major companies will be operating through wires all over the place in
the due course of time. The ‘information utility’ would almost immediately grow but the issue
was, “would it become regulated like the power manufacturing unit or be a private body?”. IBM,
of course, foresaw the possibility of massive profit to be made in this type of business, and turned
the wheel of fortune in providing computing services to companies of enormous scale.
Huge organizations (e.g., banks) find it difficult to access computing power from their
enormous mainframes as is too costly and large to run on their own. Once the personal computer
became ubiquitous, the concept of utility computing came to be known as more of an operational
profligacy that most companies did not need. This also awakened the reality that computers were
becoming reasonable and easily accessible.
The other major constraint in the design of utility computing which could shrink the
growth of the usage of personal computer was the technical restrictions on bandwidth as well
as disk spaces. The infrastructure for this type of technology was just not in place until now to
support cloud computation, even though the use of rented mainframe processing still proved to
be beneficial for quite some time.
It was in the late 1990s that companies such as Sun Microsystems decided to introduce
the concept called ‘the network is the computer’. The idea that Oracle founder Larry Ellison
stated was as follows ‘all these ideas were indeed profound but they never failed with consum-
ers, who were looking for more complete personal computer solutions specializing with, some
storage capacity availabilities’. As of now, the personal computer is not a dummy terminal. In
reality, the rise of the Internet, in the mid 1990s, changed the usage of computers and information
distribution. With the idea of utility computing, Amazon began to establish and control server
farms, to offer apps to their buyers.
Essentially, Amazon is far from being a company that specializes in retail. Its assistance to
cloud computing will be discussed shortly in a profile of companies using cloud technology, but
it is clear to any IT expert that Amazon is the first company that built on the basics of technical
innovation, particularly after the dot-com bubble time.

1.3 IMPORTANCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING

IN THE CURRENT ERA
1.3.1 Example
● 21st Feb 2011, Sometime in ICC Cricket World Cup, India
Furious cricket fans slammed organizers of the World Cup on Monday as the official
ticketing website crashed amid a scramble for 1,000 tickets available for the final.
(Source: Times of India [Magazine])
6 INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING

The manager of ICC posted a message in his Facebook fan page:

We are facing absolutely unprecedented amounts of traffic from all over the world
with hundreds of millions of people hitting at once. Some of you may have trouble
accessing the site. It seems that cricket fever has surpassed all anticipations and
expectations. Please bear with us as our global network team works on bringing you
the tickets you all have been waiting for. (Source: Kyazoonga FB page)

● Each day between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM, Since when? Till Date, Online Ticket
Booking: IRCTC, India
The bookings and enquiry requests are 6–7 times higher during the peak hours than
the rest of the day. So while the existing infrastructure is well equipped to handle
the daylong traffic, it is the peak hour traffic that clogs servers. (Source: http://www.
techno-pulse.com/2011/01/what-irctc-learn-redbus-cloud-iaas.html)
—What IRCTC can study from cloud?

● In May 2009, India

The world’s largest democracy, 1 billion+ people, goes for its general election. The
Election Commission unveiled a new website for publishing results in real time. It
showed off preparations, which indicated it was well arranged to handle 80.64 billion
hits in eight hours (2,800 hits/second), clearly a decent number by any standard.
Media reported on the election result day: 300,000 hits/second make Election
Commission website crash. (Source: Times of India [Magazine])

Similarly, server crashes were reported across India when the online CAT examination was con-
ducted by the esteemed IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) in 2009; although they were
smartly attributed to a virus and not to the number of hits. It points to the fact that the cloud
service without security aspect could also be powerless.

1.3.2 Reason for Server Crashes/Failures

The above said examples of server crashes are very few compared to the approximate of hundreds
of incidents occurring all over the place in the world on a regular basis.
The circumstances can only get worst. At present, only 25% of the world population has
Internet access. Compared to Television and other mass media, it is still adjudged as the best
medium of communication. At present, India and China have roughly 15% or less Internet pen-
etration. Even a reasonable increase in Internet access and usage, say 50%, will add more than
a billion Internet users. Going by information backed up by approximately double digit GDP
growth, they are only going to add to the number.

1.3.3 Solution to Prevent Server Crashes/Failures

The majority of us will answer as follows:
● Add additional servers to balance the load.
 1.3 IMPORTANCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN THE CURRENT ERA 7

In view of these facts, it will help us to make a sensible guess.

● Facebook has 30,000 servers and is increasing its capacity on a daily basis.
● An unofficial estimate predicts Google servers to be unbelievable in numbers; with
1 million servers across the world wide at present.
The above discussed websites are not as big as Facebook or Google but their spike in traffic
on that particular day may have trampled these giants. Given these kind of information, in order
to acquire the essential number of servers, the organizations/entities concerned will pay enough
money to make them eligible to file insolvency protection. If the organizations are economically
sound to add servers, before doing so, they have to check the following:
● The Red Cross may get that kind of traffic once in a decade.
● The website of the Indian Election Commission attracts visitors during elections, i.e., pref-
erably once in 5 years.
The above description clearly shows the following trend:
● The majorities of the traffic spikes are predictable and can be easily planned. Even the
Red Cross traffic was expected, but there was no enough time to respond and plan to han-
dle the crisis.

1.3.4 The Scenario

An organization will face heavy traffic on some particular day or days. Thus, number of
servers to face that kind of traffic needs to be enhanced, may be 1,000 times more than what
they have in normal days. However, it is not wise to purchase extra servers and place it as
standby to be used only on those heavy traffic days. This would be a sheer waste of valuable
resources. There are no forecasters who can predict when the business will speed up. The
reverse can also happen; a recession can hit and the infrastructure may have to be reduced
significantly.
Technically, the competition and economics have led to a scenario where a business needs
the following, when it comes to computing as a whole.

Dynamism
It is quite simple, similar to how you use your mobile phone connection. If you want to talk more,
you will buy a top-up card. If you are a post-paid customer, you will change your plan to meet
your requirement. Your need is dynamism. Therefore, your infrastructure should support your
changing needs.

Abstraction
From an end user’s point of view, they do not have to worry for the OS, the plug-ins, web security
or the software platform. Everything is its place. The business/consumer should focus his atten-
tion more on its core competency rather than distressing himself over secondary resources such
as the OS or the software.
8 INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Resource Sharing
The whole architecture should be implemented such that it provides you the flexible environment
where it is possible to share applications as well as other network resources. This will provide
you with need-based elastic architecture, where the resources will grow without any major
configuration modifications.

1.3.5 The Solution

There is one model of computing which satisfies the three requirements mentioned above in
business and is becoming the technology trend of the future, it is known as cloud computing.
Have you ever used cloud computing? Most of you will answer in the negative. May be you have
been hearing about the buzz created by cloud computing for the last few years, but you don’t
think it has anything to do with you. But if you are reading this page, we can assume that you are
web savvy enough to have an e-mail account. That’s it. You are already on the cloud. An e-mail
like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are cloud-based examples of SaaS (Software as a Service).
SaaS is a piece of cloud computing. Cloud is an acronym of the phrase: Common, Location-
independent, Online Utility that is available on Demand.
IT professionals recognized that there are eight basic components that are very important in
enabling the cloud computing concept (Figure 1.1) for the cloud to work in the public or private
sector, they are as follows:
1. World wide connectivity: users should have near-ubiquitous access to the Internet.
2. Open access: Users should have fair, open-minded access to the Internet.
3. Reliability: The cloud’s performance should equal to or better than recent standalone
systems.
4. Interoperability and user choice: Users must be able to progress among different clouds.
5. Security: It should ensure that data of users are safe.

Open
Reliability Security
Access

Universal Cloud Computing Privacy

Connectivity

Economic Sustainable
Interoperable
Value

Figure 1.1 Basic Components of Cloud Computing

 1.4 CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING 9

6. Privacy: Users’ rights must be clearly defined and allow access based on rights.
7. Economic value: The cloud must provide substantial savings and benefits.
8. Sustainability: The cloud must increase power effectiveness and reduce environmental
impact.

1.4 CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Server is the most important element in cloud computing. It plays a vital role since it is the brain
behind the entire processing environment. In cloud computing, server environment need not be a
high-end hardware. Rather, the key advantage of this technology is the ability of an organization
to tie together the power of inexpensive hardware on a larger scale in contrast to using lesser
amount of servers, high in quality.
It is helpful for a global organization to use cloud computing capabilities since it allows
all of their customers to access the data from any computer when required, which prevents data
loss or bad management of digital files. This makes an organization portable with improved data
security.
It also can assist to break down the command structure in an organization into many
systems located across the world, which is a managerial style that is gaining popularity as
businesses are trying to grow internationally and have more flexibility at the same time.
The fact that all the data for a user is available in one physical location allows its hardware
and software to be organized more effectively by a respective on-location team, who are respon-
sible for updating of the hardware and software.
In fact, this process is perfect and not seeks any help to retain its features rather than the
small difference in power usages. Only portions of processing power are down and an average
user would have no idea about what was not going on, nor would they care. Along those lines, the
managed care of the hardware is something that companies are looking for in a cloud computing
solution. Because it is simply cheaper for them to have someone else managing the technology
part so that they can focus on their core business.
Large-scale companies are always trying to economize their system. That is, they are con-
vinced that someone who hosts a bigger server is going to do it faster with better efficiency than
themselves. There are many activities that are no longer core of the business; while outsourcing
the processing work to a group of servers responsibilities such as providing space for equip-
ment, costs associated with hiring technicians and providing them with benefits are taken-care
of. Generally a company may consider this an unnecessary overhead that can be trimmed.
The more the numbers of servers, higher will be the power consumption. Usually servers
are placed near power plants or hydroelectric power plants. Apart from the large space occupa-
tion and energy consumption, they need large cooling towers to keep the machines operating
at the right temperature. They also need to have solid base to access the Internet, so that infor-
mation can flow freely connecting all the users globally. Data centre managers are increasingly
concerned about power efficiency techniques within the server environment. One of their major
administrative issues is to make sure that costs remain reasonable, particularly in the recent years
on energy security. This has led to ineffectiveness of data centre environments to resort to air
conditioning and energy consumption.
Following are the five characteristics of cloud computing.
10 INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Dynamic Computing Infrastructure

Dynamic infrastructure environment is needed for cloud computing. The basis of a dynamic
infrastructure is standardized, scalable and secure physical infrastructure. There should be vari-
ous redundancies to ensure high levels of availability, but mostly it must be easy to enlarge as the
demand increases, without requiring architecture restructure. Next, it must be virtualized.
Virtualized environment uses server virtualization to run the services, these services needs
to be easily provisioned and de-provisioned via software automation. These service workloads
have to be switched over from one physical server to another as capacity demands increase or
decrease. Finally, this infrastructure should be utilized by an external or an internal provider. The
infrastructure must provide business value beyond the investment.
A dynamic computing infrastructure is complex in supporting the flexible nature of ser-
vice provisioning and de-provisioning as requested by a client, still maintaining high levels of
reliability and security.

IT Service-centric Approach
Cloud computing is service-centric business. This is in stark difference to more conventional
system- or server-centric models. In the majority cases, users of the cloud usually want to run
some business service or application for an exact timely purpose and they don’t want to get
bogged down in the system and network administration of the environment. They would prefer to
rapidly and easily access a devoted application or service. By abstracting away the server-centric
outlook of the infrastructure, users can effortlessly get access to pre-defined computing environ-
ments conceived especially around their service.
An IT service-centric advance makes customer acceptance and enterprise agility which is
less difficult and speedier. A customer can perform an administrative work, the more expedient,
the enterprise progresses, lessening are the charges or propelling is the revenue.

Self-service Based Usage Model

Interaction with the cloud needs some level of user self-service. Best of breed self-service
creates the chance to the users to upload, build, deploy, schedule, manage and report on their
business services on-demand basis. Self-service cloud must provide easy-to-use, intuitive user
interfaces that help the users to effectively manage the service-delivery life cycle. The superiority
of self-service from the users’ purpose of business is a stage of empowerment and yields valued
enterprise agility. One advantage often overlooked from the service provider’s point of view is
that the more self-service that can be delegated to the users, the least managerial participation is
needed. This saves time and money and allows administrative staff to concentrate on strategic and
high-valued responsibilities.

Minimally or Self-managed Platform

Self-managed platform is very essential for a service provider in cloud environment. Best-
of-breed clouds make self-management through software automation, leveraging the following
capabilities:
● A provisioning engine where the services are deployed should have high levels of reuse.
● Mechanisms for scheduling the resources and reserving resource capacity.
 1.5 WHAT CLOUD COMPUTING REALLY IS? 11

● Capabilities for configuring, organizing and reporting to make sure resources are allocated
and reallocated to several groups of users.
● Tools must be available for controlling access to resources and policies for resources to be
utilized or operations to be performed.
All of these competencies sanction finance agility while concurrently enacting valued and
necessary administrative power. This balance of power and delegation maintains security
and uptime, reduces the level of administrative efforts and maintains working expenses low, and
releases resources to focus on higher-value projects.

Consumption-based Billing
At last, cloud computing is usage based. Users have to compensate for only for the usage and
consequently they are assured or given an assertion supported on usage basis. Cloud computing
platforms must deliver mechanisms to catch information about the usage that enables that charge
is calculated and that should be integrated into the billing systems.
From a user’s point of view, this scenario helps them in keeping their costs down. From
a provider’s perspective, it allows them to monitor usage for charge calculation and billing
purposes.
In summary, all of these defining characteristics are necessary in producing an enterprise
private cloud capable of achieving compelling business value, which includes savings on capital
equipment and operating costs, reduced support costs and significantly increased business agility.
All of these enable corporations to improve their profit margins and competitiveness in the
markets they serve.

1.5 WHAT CLOUD COMPUTING REALLY IS?

In simple terms, cloud computing can be broken down to a browser-based application that is
hosted on a remote server. To an average user, that is all he or she really needs to know about
cloud computing, however, there is a lot more to it than just that. What cloud computing really
represents is huge: it facilitates small organizations to compete with much larger ones, it helps in
saving lot of money and to utilize energy efficiency in operations.
Cloud computing as it relates to Internet technology is all around us for example, accessing
e-mail and searching for information in the world wide web. In these examples, the power of
processing technology is used, which exists in distant locations and are not known to the users.
Actually, network connection these days is so important to perform basic applications. As an
example, the thesaurus operation in Microsoft Word needs a network connection to look up
another word.
In effect, the cloud provides users of this network with an addition of their own machine.
As long as a user is connected to the Internet, the capabilities of cloud computing comes into play
and many advantages can be achieved. One example is processing power.
One of the biggest benefits would be storage. Large number of servers possesses massive
amounts of storage. An example of this would be free e-mail services that are available on the
web. Most often e-mail services offer a large amount of storage to their users because it is
inexpensive for them to do so by using the unoccupied space that is in the cloud. This is a
MOVE TO CLOUD
CHAPTER
2
COMPUTING
2.1 Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

2.2 Nature of the Cloud

2.3 Technologies in Cloud Computing

2.4 Migrating into the Cloud

2.5 Seven-Step Model

16 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

2.1 PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

In the previous chapter, we discussed some basics of cloud computing, its history, characteristics,
what is cloud computing all about and what isn’t cloud computing. Cloud computing can enable
constant flow of information between service providers and the end users. Other remote systems
would struggle with such a task because they are based on database that is largely outdated. The
ease with which information can be accessed gives confidence to the employees of the outsourc-
ing organization, so that they can continue with their usual routine despite the introduction of
cloud computing. As cloud computing relies on satellite facilities for the administration of infor-
mation technology, the need for a physical address is transferred to another company. This means
that the location manager has more elasticity in terms of the distribution of office space. Cloud
computing is defined as the business of sharing some software from the ‘cloud’.
Peter Coffee from Salesforce.com, says that cloud computing must necessarily involve
‘multi-tenancy’ (like a shared apartment block), be ‘pay as you go’ (like rent) and be transparent
(services clearly priced by features). Microsoft is putting its old office software and file sharing
application, SharePoint, on the cloud alongside developer tools in its Azure platform, which gives
old customers the comfort of having their own stacks.
More and more businesses are finding ways to reduce capital expenditures and operating costs
through cloud computing. As a result, they are moving business functions from onsite server to the
Web. Cloud computing adopts Internet-based services to support business processes. Before making
the decision to move your business in ‘the cloud’, make sure you know what you are getting into.

2.1.1 Advantages of Cloud Computing in IT Field

The interconnectivity of computer servers is the main advantages of cloud computing. This char-
acteristic can allow an organization to carry out a variety of tasks in different locations.
Therefore, cloud computing can facilitate proper management of information technology
resources within the organization. This advantage is also crucial to the multitasking demands that
are part of modern business. In order to deal with a competitive market, there is an increase in
the diversification of the activities that different companies undertake. This can place enormous
pressure on the information systems. Once you install a good cloud computing system, then you
will be in a position to carry out all your functions in a concurrent context. In fact, it is far easier
to supervise these simultaneous activities under the cloud computing system because you can
install a central command unit.
The second characteristic of the cloud computing innovation is that it allows outsourcing
of a key function of the company’s work portfolio. Just like the call centres that have decided
to relocate to cheaper environments, implementing a cloud computing project can significantly
reduce your IT budget. It is on the costlier side in terms of staff supervision, but overall you will
be able to save in the long run.
Maintaining an in-house information technology team will require its own budgetary
resources. At the same time, you will be facing market pressures to reduce the prices that your
customers pay. If you are to reconcile these two pressures, then you have to rely on tools such
as cloud computing. It enables you to continue reaping the benefits from a first class network
management service, yet avoiding the obvious challenges that occur, when you are manag-
ing that system yourself. Other problems such as supervision can be handled through regular
 2.1 PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING 17

Outsource
Process
Online
Offline Access Storage

Cloud Platforms
Online
Computing
Collaboration

Third Party Online Office

Integration
Online
Resources

Figure 2.1 Advantages of Cloud Computing

contractual arrangements so that they do not take values from the advantages that have been
accrued. Organizations that are sensitive to their information technology costs have no alternative,
but to consider cloud computing mechanisms.
Figure 2.1 shows the merits of cloud computing and states the importance of migrating to
cloud computing, as it supports/provides the following benefits:
● Online storage
● Accessible in different platforms
● Using online resources
● Online collaboration and
● Easy outsourcing processes
Initially, it is important to recognize that cloud computing is expected to bring in a higher
level of automation than the ordinary systems of communication between the various sections
of an organization. This means that, if you find that a lot of your time is spent doing manual
trouble-shooting or dealing with configuration, then the deal is just not worth it. There are some
organizations that have outsourced their information technology under the cloud computing
scheme but have ended up with more work than ever before. Clearly, this indicates that they made
the wrong decision in choosing to go with cloud computing.
The second element that you should look out for when you implement a cloud computing
initiative is that there should be a level of virtualization of the processes. It means that the activi-
ties should be online. If you find yourself in the position, whereby you have to carry out the activi-
ties in the local vicinity, then you have to recognize that your cloud computing initiative has failed.
18 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Users
Service Request Examiner and Controller

Resources
Allocator
Pricing Accounting

VM Monitor Dispatcher Service Monitor

Virtual
Machines

Computer
Systems

Figure 2.2 Key Elements of Cloud Computing

The company to which you outsource, the functionality must be able to deliver a seamless
service via the Internet or else you have to review the contract. If they do not have the capacity to
do this effectively, you might bring forward a suggestion for sharing costs and profits. Make sure
that at the very beginning of the relationship, these issues are tested and clarified.
A good cloud computing package must only charge you for the services that you use. This
is a fundamental advantage of cloud computing and if the other party cannot deliver then you
really need to consider cancelling the contract. You might find that some providers want you to
have a standing charge that covers their fixed costs.
This might be acceptable if they are providing a particularly excellent service but you must
insist that, there is also an element of variability in the prices depending on how much you engage
the service. If it appears that on a long-term basis, you will not be able to support the contract due
to small usage and then you can consider down-scaling the operation.
Figure 2.2 shows some key elements of cloud computing, without which computing cannot
be established. Elements are divided into four layers. Layer 1 contains the physical machines,
where the required software and operating systems are installed. Layer 2 forms virtual machines.
Layer 3 explains the service level agreements (SLA) and resource allocator to the virtual machines
(VM). This layer also accounts for the job, prices it and dispatches the jobs to the VM. Layer 4
contains the users or brokers using the computing.

2.1.2 The Fixed Cost Advantage

Software provided online is upgraded and maintained by the provider, so that small business owner
do not have to purchase the newest version of software program or download fixes and patches.
 2.1 PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING 19

No need to buy a program, but entering into a monthly or annual contract is also attractive, as is
the reality that several applications are offered for free.
Though the issue of security cuts both ways, which has been contradictory with the results.
Individually, many small firms do not have the budget to spend on adequate on-site security and
backup systems are subjecting their business data vulnerable to stealing, loss, hackers, power
outages and natural disasters.
Chad Barr, president of CB Software Systems says, ‘Cloud is a very safe way of operating
today and it’s going to get better and better’. On the other hand, the idea that extremely sensitive
data, possibly including trade secrets or confidential legal documents, is not protected up on com-
pany premises but is side-lined anywhere in a cloud disconcerts to numerous business owners.

2.1.3 Keeping Data Safe

It is possible for anonymous computer hackers to gain access to the business information in the
cloud. A discontented former employee known to the company may be able to guess passwords
or answer your security questions and get into the accounts to do harm or worse. There have been
a couple of such high-profiled incidents revealed in recent times, somewhere online services mis-
laid and secure data went offline for some period of time, during which their customers’ accounts
were inaccessible. The key to using cloud hosting safely is finding a conscientious provider that
provides back-up programs so your online data can also be stored domestically.

2.1.4 The Possible Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

The main trouble with cloud computing are interrelated to the loss of control to another party. This
can lead to management problems and inconsistency within the information technology depart-
ments. Anyone can put up new systems for dealing with this divergence and will have to construct
their communication systems as the basis as there is another company involved in their business.
Occasionally cloud computing will have so many teething problems that it might take years
before you settle into an conformity with your supplier, whereby conflicts can be determined
before they spiral down.
Industries that transact sensitive data will be anxious about security when it comes to cloud
computing. The fact that the server is situated in a remote area means, that you have to entrust the
security arrangements to somebody else. Now imagine, that functions of a passport office have to be
located in a foreign country. Suppose war breaks out between the two countries. The connectivity
between the servers will be stopped. These are some of the serious challenges to cloud computing.

2.1.5 Advantages of Cloud Computing

Cost reduction: Cloud computing lessens paperwork, enterprise deal charges and minimizes the
financial endeavour in hardware. Moving your enterprise to ‘the cloud’ in addition lessens the
want for an employee.
Scalability: Cloud computing services sanction enterprises to only compensate for what they use
like electrical power and water. As the business grows, user can put up by adding more server space.
Levels the playing field: Sharing IT resources with other companies reduces the cost of licensing
software and retail servers.
20 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Easier collaboration: Cloud computing services allow to access any time from any computer, it
is easy to work together with employees in remote locations.
Affordable: With cloud computing, it is possible to reduce operational costs and investment
expenditures on hardware, software licenses and implementation services.
Scalable and flexible: Cloud computing can sanction to maximize supplies for better competence
and lessen unused capacity. It can also scale up or downward to meet the varying demands of the
business.
Efficiency: Cloud computing renders the gain of divided hardware, automated and recognizable
technologies. The employees have the right to use the database from everywhere by using any
PC, mobile device or browser. It also reduces overall energy usage and physical presence.

2.1.6 Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Security concerns: The main concern with cloud computing is having your data easily reached
via the web. Although security is stretched and is getting even more advanced as technology pro-
viders perfect the framework, it is still an anxiety.
Risk of losing internet connection: If there is no Internet connection, the database accessing is
very difficult.
Limited resources for customizations: One can require in-depth customizations and integration
with his current systems for his daily business functions. Cloud computing may not be accom-
modating to his needs.
Availability: If it happens, the cloud service goes down unexpectedly, leaving you without import-
ant information for hours or more? Then how is it possible to get reliability in retrieval of data is
yet another challenge.
Data mobility and ownership: In cloud environment, it is possible get back the data safely even
when the cloud service is stopped. How can you be assured that the service provider will wipe
out your data once you have cancelled the service?
Privacy: How much data the cloud service companies are collecting and how are they using the
information?

2.2 NATURE OF THE CLOUD

During earlier days, numerous shifts in business have been described and puffed up for better or
for worse as ‘disruptive’. Playing off was the term coined by author and Harvard Business School
Professor Clayton Christensen in 1995; true disruption occurs when an innovation in technol-
ogy or business model surprisingly displaces an established one. The growth of cloud comput-
ing could drastically change the way companies manage their technology assets and computing
needs. This is why cloud computing is a striking option for enterprises and why the concept has
built up, so much momentum in modern years.
Cloud computing reached widely because, its not a hype and also it adopts existing
computing technologies. However, that is exactly what makes cloud computing work as not a
disruptive technology per se but a disruptive IT delivery model which leverages key technology
ideas (like grid computing, utility computing and Software as a Service) to deliver IT in a much
22 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

2.3 TECHNOLOGIES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Now-a-days, the news about cloud computing is that the cost of the hardware is very high.
International Data Corporation has predicted that the revenue is estimated to grow from
$582 million, which was in 2009, to about $718 million in 2014. In addition, for the private cloud
computing this revenue will spurt up from $2.6 billion to nearly about $5.7 during the same
period. This increase in the income clearly indicates that the cloud computing, now will have to
splurge much more funds on the server hardware.
Cloud computing is based on the advance distributed technologies. They may, although be
a bit related to each other, but their functions are different from each other. The past few years, the
concept of cloud computing is the only technology has evolved in the field of computer science.
The name of cloud computing is being derived from the subsistence of data and applications on a
‘cloud’ of web servers. Cloud computing can be defined as getting the work complete by sharing
and using resources and applications of a network environment without apprehending about the
owner and manager of these resources and applications. Now with the help of this technology,
resource and data required to do a job is no longer restricted by one’s personal computer. The
resources which are hosted elsewhere enable it to be accessible at any time and at any location
and this benefit lift the bar of time and place on the work to be completed. Hence it helps the user
to work on it anytime and from anywhere.

2.3.1 Other Cloud-related Technologies

Grid computing: It defined as an extension of distributed and parallel computing in which a super
and virtual computer consists of a number of networked and loosely coupled computers that act
together to perform enormous tasks.
Utility computing: When the resources used in computing process are packaged as a metered
service similar to electricity—a traditional public utility.
Autonomic computing: It defines that systems are capable of self-management.

2.3.2 Working of Cloud

Cloud computing uses information technology as a service over the network. Cloud comput-
ing consists of Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), Hardware as a
Service (HaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing finally enables the user to
rent a virtual server loaded with software and turn it on and off according to the need from the
user and it can furthermore be cloned to meet an immediate workload demand. Cloud computing
also stores a large amount of data that can be accessed by the certified users with the authorized
applications. A cloud is used as a storage medium which handles applications, business and
personal data.
Cloud computing has an important feature of a workload swing, so that the personal
computers are no more required to run these applications. There is a network of computers
that handles the cloud itself. It considerably declines the use of hardware and programs on the
front of client as all the processing and management of data are taken care by the cloud. All the
applications are being run by the interface software that is the only thing that the user’s computer
 2.3 TECHNOLOGIES IN CLOUD COMPUTING 23

knows. The latest interface software used in today’s world is Internet Explorer 9, apart from the
previous versions such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8.
E-mail account holders such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail will know, what cloud
computing is?. In the latest e-mail working system very well used cloud computing techniques,
due to this salient feature the service’s computer keeps all the software and storage and the local
computer is used to just display the information.

2.3.3 Key Characteristic of Cloud and its Role

As of now, there is no specific definition for cloud computing and it will take some time to
develop its other characteristics and a standard definition based on the ongoing practices in this
field. The two keys that enable technologies based upon the practices in the areas of service
provisioning and solution design would play a very significant role in the revolutionary phase of
cloud computing, they are: (i) virtualization and (ii) SOA.

Virtualization Technique
Virtualization works on the management of how the likeness of the OS, middleware and pro-
grams procreated and assigned to a personal system or part of the server stack away.
These technologies in addition helps in reusing certificates of OS, middleware or programs
requests after the customer distributes their service from the cloud computing platform.

Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)

Cloud computing is basically a collection of services, which communicate with each other.
Figure 2.3 displays the basic architecture of SOA and its components such as: (i) service providers,
(ii) service requestor and (iii) contract details or in other words service level agreements. Normally
services are used to pass the data and if some services integrated in a way to execute some spe-
cific activities. As opposed to the past decades, most of the applications are standalone and are
designed for a single use only now the system is growing towards service orientation. Several big
companies such as Google, Microsoft, Sun and even Amazon have the competence of providing
services instead of directly promoting the software to the user. Those companies that desire cost
cuts through choosing to rent rather than purchasing most definitely need these characteristics.
Anyhow issues like security, cost, availability and integration of applications will play a vital role
in adopting these architectures.

Compositional
Operator Contract

Components SOA

Figure 2.3 Service-oriented Architecture

24 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

2.4 MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD

2.4.1 Cloud Computing Migration Issues: What You Need to Know?

Among the new technologies introduced in the IT market, the cloud computing buzz is an
extended level of previous ‘year-of’ technologies such as application service providers, software
as a service (SaaS) and utility computing. In this case, the hype may be true. As of the current
survey indicates that the cloud CPU will be used by many industrial giants in near future. Our
mission as an IT engineer is to understand:
● What is a cloud and what are the benefits it offers to clients?
● What challenges and obstacles clients might have to overcome to tap into the cloud?
● How their management of IT must change to secure and control their new cloud-driven
infrastructure?
When you migrate from a client to the cloud, the issues you will face fall into the following
overall categories.

Security
Security is an obvious threshold question, if the cloud is not secure, enterprises will not consider
migrating to it fearing their sensitive data will be tampered. The external SAAS providers can
also give satisfaction to the customers in security level, example the sales Force.com is rendering
an excellent feature in Cloud security. It is possible because the public clouds are multi-tenant,
user application could be affected by the vulnerabilities or defects of other neighbours’ code.
Users must ensure that they understand the underlying infrastructure of the cloud to which they
migrate from their clients and must also advise clients to include security in their cloud SLAs
and terms of service.

Vendor Management
As soon as you realize that the cloud is not in your IT platform and it is in the hands of an out-
side firm, how do you guarantee that their technical or business problems won’t become yours?
When the user is going to migrate with the outsource providers, then the service level agree-
ments and its terms are thoroughly checked. While the whole idea behind cloud computing is to
propose a standardized, multi-tenant infrastructure, cloud vendors may not offer the same level
of custom SLAs as IT managers. Amazon’s AWS Management Console, which is a monitoring
interface, offers robust features and helpful to IT Managers.
Subsequently, additional cloud vendors and cloud management start-up firms are springing
up to address cloud needs. At rest, we need to assist clients, so that the cloud services they dial up
are convenient and can be monitored sufficiently to ensure that they will not have interruptions
and performance issues.

Technical Integration
The technical issues are also complex. Now most firms that migrate to the cloud environment
in a hybrid model, are keeping certain key elements of their infrastructure in-house and under
 2.4 MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD 25

their direct control, while outsourcing less susceptible or core components. Integrating internal
and external infrastructures can be a technical concern. A VM template should incorporate
infrastructure, application and security to fullfill the need of the user. Like Force.com and
Salesforce.com’s cloud offering, is leading the way by integration as a service on top of its cloud
contributions.

Process and Culture

There is also the ever-present political and cultural landmine, when anyone with a credit card can
surf the web site of a public cloud vendor and dial up teraflops of cloud capacity, how does IT
maintain control of its application architecture?
We have seen that cloud services are offered with a credit card. When IT power becomes
economical and easily accessed, it’s control over its domestic customers can be liquefied.

The Business View

Enterprises around the world have invested trillions of dollars in technology, hoping to improve
their execution potential, drive productivity, improve profitability and attain continued compet-
itive advantage. Some have been more successful than others in getting the predictable returns
from their technology investments but few, if any, have been able to recognize the full potential
of their investments. In reality, many enterprise’s IT organizations have developed in complex-
ity as well as in size and are proving to become quite uncontrollable—a drain on their business
margin structures and some are even viewed as inhibitors for sustaining the ever-changing needs
of business.

2.4.2 Migrating to the Cloud: Deployment Considerations

The cloud migration has started. For many, the superiority of cloud computing outweigh the
risks. Cloud computing straightaway addresses a massive measure of challenges. How many of
the following complaints have you heard about your company?
● The IT environment is too large and complex.
● Sluggishness of the existing systems that do not meet user expectations.
● Inability to consistently and effectively scale to support rapid growing requirements.
● Composite rules to obtain performance metrics.
● Widening gap between available functionality and tangible features used.
● We can’t find the aptitude to support new technology.
● High operating costs, high investment costs.
The cloud does suggest solutions to the glitches listed above, its actual efficiency for enter-
prises lie in, how they address the following key questions.
● What are the underlying drivers for patter into the cloud? Is it for new functionality/appli-
cation or moving from an existing result? How clearly are these distinct and communicated
to the project team?
● What business needs and solution do cloud serve?
26 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

● Will the cloud-based solution work in segregation or work with other systems?
● Is the planned solution part of a recognized cloud platform?
● How many customers will access the cloud? What are the training and support levels
necessary?
● What is the total lifecycle cost of the solution and reason?
● Does the ‘pay-per-use’ model improve our cash flow?

The Process: Key Stages in Migrating to the Cloud

While implementing a cloud, migration expected at replacing on a premise major business appli-
cation may look like, at times, a simple straightforward implementation. It is burdened with pit
falls, which may undermine the true value to the investment, and in fact put enterprises in bad
situation than before. Understanding and planning for these pitfalls is significant for a successful
deployment of the solution. A well-planned and executed cloud computing solution cannot only
provide needed functionality but can also propose an opportunity to improve processes that were
supported directly or indirectly by inheritance systems. IT and business stakeholders must work
together and have to:
● Clearly state business objectives for the cloud migration.
● Define project scope of the cloud migration.
● Provide a set of guiding principles for all to follow.
Cloud migration process can be divided into three areas:

1. Plan
● Determine key business drivers
● Define business objectives
● Get executive sponsorship
● Set project guiding principles
● Form project team made up of IT and business representatives
Develop a project plan by including the following:
● Define business requirements
● Set key success metrics
● Set timeline
● Identify decision-making authorities

2. Execute
● Execute the plan
● Stay away from ‘scope creep’—stay focused on original project scope; this becomes a
challenge particularly in cases, where a major legacy application with large users set is
being replaced
● Remember to follow the guiding principles at all times
 2.4 MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD 27

● Communicate to all stakeholders regularly (no surprises!)

● Train users

3. Monitor
● Monitor adoption
● Track success metrics
● Stay away from scope creep (this one may well decide the success or failure of the project)
● Follow guiding principles
● Only implement changes based on quantifiable business needs

Five Things to be Known While Migrating to Cloud

How to extract the maximum usage of cloud computing is one critical question? It gives rooms
to the following points:
● Operational efficiency
● Reduced costs
● Application flexibility

However, you are probably worried about the problems and costs associated with the transition.
Unless a company is smaller in size, migrating to the cloud can be a painful, labour-intensive
process that opens you to many new risks. Fortunately, it does not have to. A little foresight and
planning will go a long way. The below given five steps are very essential to reach migration and
achieve ROI.

Start small: The latest trend is that people end up buying into the hype, hastening into full-
scale projects as well, soon and forgetting to bring common sense along for the ride. Slow
down, define your goals, identify potential obstacles and define what being cloud-enabled will
do for your organization in the long run. As with any new trend of technology, it is important
to verify the waters before leaping into it heads on. Like most of the organizations, if you
don’t have the skills and necessary knowledge to make fully informed decisions about how to
handle identities, enforce application right to use, guard against data leaks, update software
licenses and safeguard investments in inheritance hardware and software. One must be ready
to identify a few easy applications to shift that will distribute immediate benefits from being
cloud enabled. Start with the ideas such as, e-mail and messaging and use them as test cases for
further implementation.

Trust cloud vendors to protect data: The weak point of cloud is its security. It actually can be
cloud enabled and people can parse out the new risks and opportunities. Improvement in security
features with respect to data protection helps the cloud providers to deliver their service effec-
tively. Large cloud providers have the resources to tackle data protection in depth. They can try
various approaches to provide best solutions. This trial-and-error method could help to improve
the fault tolerance.
28 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Importance of security features: Many cloud providers should deliver good job of protecting
data but not all. As new providers pop up almost daily, it is important to do a comparison of
these features, as follows: Do they have good security processes in place? Do they have both
perimeter-based and behaviour-based security tools? Will they protect you against data leakage
and IP theft? Do they have solid business continuity and disaster-recovery plans in place? Have
they been hit with recent attacks and if so, how did they recover from them?
For example, the Google server had an attack before, although there is no publicly avail-
able evidence as to who was responsible, the fact that user accounts of Chinese’s dissidents were
breached. How did Google respond? They have applied many approaches. Among them, two are
very important, they are:
1. They immediately brought in the NSA to help them address the problem of foreign security
services penetrating their defences
2. They publicly discussed the attacks
Be an identity provider: There is one thing cloud providers cannot handle for customer that is,
the integrity of their users. By definition, enterprise identities must be defined (and preferably
handled) by the enterprise. You have to convey your cloud provider, whom to let in and what
privileges each person should receive. You also have to define the mechanisms by which authen-
tication, access and roles will be enforced.
Due to many reasons cloud computing got a bad reputation, in terms of security, because
developers forgot about the importance of identity, with cloud-enabling different applications.
This is not a fundamental flaw in the cloud model rather it is an age-old story of developers not
thinking through the security implications of a new computing model. To protect sensitive data
in the cloud, absolute verification of user’s identity is very essential.
Plan for latency and outages: Latency and Outages are other two lapses for cloud other
than security. The cloud providers are aware of these problems and are busily solving them.
Nevertheless, when you pick applications to move to the cloud, you can not overlook the
problems that arise when you rely on delivery over the public Internet. If you are running a large
enterprise, you may have WAN optimization or route steering tools in your venture. With these
directory services, it would be hasty to discard those investments. Keep latency-sensitive appli-
cations in-house and implement a hybrid cloud model.
You also need to have in-depth disaster recovery and backup plans that include how
to overcome the situation when cloud provider is down. Another time, cloud providers are
possibly better positioned to deal with outages than you, but most of the foremost cloud pro-
viders have suffered through a significant outage at one time or another. With its guarantee
to cut costs and simplicity of scalability, the attractions of cloud computing for IT managers
are straightforward, but the silver lining still eludes some enterprises unwilling to release
sensitive data.

2.4.3 Benefits of the Cloud

Cloud computing has became an important technology for accountants of an organization.
Since it takes a lot of expensive assets, whose true profit involvement is hard to measure off
the balance sheet and converts them into current expenses. This is versatile in these capital-
conscious times.
 2.5 SEVEN-STEP MODEL 31

Who wins depends on the platform that has the most popular applications? Although this is
far off from the enterprise market, which is more mature and hence homogenous, conservative
and geared for efficiency rather than novelty. As for this, the efforts of leading enterprise soft-
ware firms such as SAP, Oracle, Siebel and the rest have become cloud-compliant and cautious
at best.

2.4.11 Remotely Mirrored Servers

We have already seen these earlier in conventional remotely mirrored servers which don’t have
anything remotely alike the same flexibility. Solutions such as VMware’s VMotion move vir-
tual machines between physical devices routinely using hypervisors in remotely connected data
centres. It tries to move the virtual machine between different companies. ‘If you have a standard
communication protocol across these two clouds, where you can, later communicate with the
handlers of the other cloud, for the right security, networking, availability and orchestration,
then only can you make it happen,’ says Radha Ratnaparkhi, Director of Commercial Systems at
IBM. Previously, the company experimented live relocation of SAP applications across remote
IBM systems. Once you have identified, how to move the data around efficiently, you have to
ensure that you can stop it from moving everywhere, he said. For example ‘It may be significant
for policy rule that data has to reside in Europe and not shift to the US,’ he said. ‘To define the
location of that storage there are no methods available at present’.

2.4.12 Payment Procedure

If all of these have been worked out, we have to think of pure economics of cloud computing.
How will the payment be made? Renowned ‘pay as you go’ model allow users to bid for time in
the cloud.
Finally, we anticipate that the cloud will become a more ubiquitous part of each day com-
puting life. Some hefty research work is needed to create confidence among enterprise users,
which is the first and essential step.

2.5 SEVEN-STEP MODEL

The cloud has captured the interest and thoughts of many and it keeps progressing at a rapid
speed. Whether the attraction is based upon a aspiration to acquire IT services on a ‘pay as
you grow’ model and reduce principal expenses, or simply to acquire a method of filling gaps
and relieving shortcomings, the cloud model is, at a minimum, on the radar screens of most IT
organizations. It was inevitable. It is true that in the history, cloud promotion managed to get
ahead of the reality. In reality, ‘the cloud’ is not a monolith and it has been usually understood
that its products and services are in their teething stage and naturally require maturation time.
As with the new thought, many variances are spawned and every one will not succeed. Keeping
in mind that for every dot-com success, there were dozens of indistinct problems. In the interest
of pursuing a more rational point of view, there are seven regions to think in evaluating and tran-
sitioning to cloud-based solutions.
32 MOVE TO CLOUD COMPUTING

Know that there are many different variances of cloud services: The term ‘cloud’ has turn out to
be overloaded and now broadly characterized as a service-delivery model that can be applied to
a range of services around multiple stage of IT: public and private variants. The discussion over,
what comprise a cloud occupied a great deal of conversation in the earlier period? It is implicit
that the significant first step is to become knowledgeable on the various cloud options and their
shades.
Move towards the cloud as a tool or an additional option to supply IT functionality: Those who
have effectively leveraged cloud technology have done so in a practical or opportunistic fashion
rather than view cloud as some sort of computing model—‘build it and they will come’. Think
of cloud contributions as tools or alternative solutions to definite course of actions.
For example, in the storage space, an organization to address different service requirements
may deploy multiple tiers of storage relating to performance and availability. Cloud storage can
be viewed basically as one more option for addressing a set of requirements for one or more tiers.
This provides a perspective from which rational conclusion can be made.
Recognize which constituent of your environment may be ‘cloud compatible’: The environment
is not uniform in providing cloud services. It depends on the compatibility of the region in the
environment. Some key factors that might restrict cloud compatibility are as follows:
● Hardware dependencies
● Governance and regulatory restrictions requiring controls, location of data or comprehen-
sive chain-of-custody monitoring is probably excluded from the cloud
The objective should be to identify application and functional areas that fit a shape and have
requirements that support well with the capabilities of a cloud service.
To better compute the advantage of cloud services lies on understanding about current costs: The
most important attraction of the cloud is more cost-effective in delivering required IT functions.
Unfortunately, many start their examination of cloud options without exactly understanding their
present cost composition. When a cloud solution provider offers service costs based on usage,
internal IT personnel struggle to classify their present costs and make them impossible to accu-
rately compare or assess the differences.
To deal with this, IT organizations have started to think and work more like a service pro-
vider. They should be able to describe their help as services based on attributes such as business
value, compliance, security, availability and performance. Technology options should be tied
up to service offerings and the costs associated with those services. This approach can help out
to force more proficient deliverance of IT services and raise user fulfilment, whether a cloud
approach is eventually pursued or not.
Preparation of organization to ‘manage’ rather than ‘operate’: The majority of IT organizations
are technology-focused rather than service-focused. They are driven by identifying new technol-
ogies and opportunities for incorporating them into their location rather than evaluating present
service and efficiency gaps and then addressing these shortcomings. As a result, while they can
articulate technical speeds and feeds, they are often foiled when an executive, having heard a
pitch from a cloud seller, asks them about incremental unit cost and run rate.
An IT organization must be designed to offer infrastructure ‘services’ aligned with business
requirements in the future. Many organizations accomplish this by combining delivery methods
including the cloud. IT should be equipped to administer the entire group, regardless of whether
a service is offered internally or externally.
 SUMMARY 33

To simplify and de-risk your migration: Arrangement of data is so crucial—Accepting a cloud-

based solution will always require some amount of migration activity and suitable groundwork
is essential. Successful migration needs understanding of present environment, which includes
dependencies in-terms of application and data. This is usually done during discovery and analysis.
Aligning data starts by identifying application services, delineating their various sub-parts
and then enumerating each part of the service. From this, it is then possible to efficiently plan
and series the actual migration to the target cloud atmosphere. It is noted that migration costs
influence the financial analysis and postpones due to inadequate migration planning.
Question to gain more knowledge: It is difficult to ask questions about cloud result provider to
reach a acceptable comfort level with this technology, particularly, since the cloud is fresh and
organizations are short of experience of it. Among the serious areas of focal point are:
● Service level agreements (SLAs)
● Security
● Data safety and availability
The cloud phenomenon has caught the attention and imagination of many people’s and it
keeps progressing at a rapid speed.
Understanding an organization’s present natural environment, articulating its obligations
and then designing and producing the transition are the scheme of things to effectively character-
ize and recognize in cloud. While it may not be simple, a systematic approach that incorporates
the areas noted here will uplift the possibility of success.

SUMMARY
❖ Cloud computing can empower the unfailing flow of knowledge between the service
provider and the end user.
❖ The pay as you go model of cloud computing adds ample reservation to the company’s
portfolio.
❖ Cloud computing is delineated as the enterprise of sharing some programs from the
‘cloud’.
❖ Cloud computing adopts Internet-based services to support enterprise processes.
❖ It is important to know about cloud computing before making the decision to progress
the enterprise in ‘the cloud’.
❖ The interconnectivity of computer servers is the first constituent that identifies cloud
computing.
❖ Cloud computing can alleviate the appropriate organization technical knowledge
resources within the organization.
❖ Characteristic of the cloud computing is that it sanctions outsourcing company’s work
portfolio, which is the key component.
❖ Cloud computing is expected to carry in a higher stage of automation than the common
procedures of making acquaintance between the assorted sections of an organization.
TYPES OF CLOUD
CHAPTER
3
3.1 Public and Private Cloud

3.2 Cloud Infrastructure

3.3 Cloud Application Architecture

38 TYPES OF CLOUD

3.1 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CLOUD

Today everyone is speaking about cloud computing, but the exact meaning of the term still
remains vague. It can be loosely explained as follows: the operations of a business are carried out
in one place and the functions in some remote place; it is possible with the help of technology,
that is cloud computing. Cloud computing has an advantage for the businesses to increase their
IT functionality without adding extra infrastructure or software.

3.1.1 Types of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing can be classified into four types based on the location of the cloud:
1. Public cloud: This computing infrastructure is hosted at the vendor’s workplace. The
end user cannot view the infrastructure. The computing infrastructure is shared between
companies.
2. Private cloud: Here the computing infrastructure is dedicated to the customer and is not
shared with any other companies. They are costly and highly secure than public clouds.
Private clouds may be hosted externally as well as in their own premise hosted clouds.
3. Hybrid cloud: Organizations can submit less valued applications in public cloud and high
valued applications in the private cloud. The combination is known as hybrid cloud. Cloud
bursting is used to define a system where the organization uses its own infrastructure for
normal usage and cloud is used for peak times.
4. Community cloud: The cloud infrastructure is shared between the companies of the same
community. For example, all the government organizations in a city can share the same
cloud but not the non-governmental organizations.
Six different types of cloud computing and their offering to businesses are listed as
follows:
1. WWW-based cloud computing service is a type of cloud service that exploits certain web
service functionalities, rather than deploying applications. For example, it can use Google
Maps API.
2. Software as a service is an idea, where an application can be used by multiple tenants, using
the browser. For example, SaaS solutions are used in sales, ERP and HR.
3. Platform as a service is a variant of SaaS, one can run their own applications but by
executing on the cloud provider’s infrastructure.
4. Utility cloud computing services offer virtual storage and server options, where the
companies can access it on demand. This allows easy creation of virtual data centre.
5. Managed services are the oldest cloud computing solutions. In this, a cloud computing
provider utilizes an application than the end customers. Examples are using anti-spam
services and application monitoring.
6. Service commerce is a mix of SaaS and managed services. It provides a hub of services,
where the end user interacts. Examples are tracking expenses, virtual assistant services and
travel bookings.
 3.1 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CLOUD 39

3.1.2 Public Cloud

A public cloud is based on the standard cloud computing model, where the service provider
makes the resources such as storage and applications available to the public over the WWW.
These services may be free or on a pay-per-usage model. The advantages of using a public cloud
computing service are as follows:
● Inexpensive and easy to setup
● Scalability
● No resources are wasted
Examples are IBM’s Blue Cloud, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), AppEngine, Sun
Cloud and Windows Azure Services Platform.

3.1.3 Private Cloud (Internal Cloud or Corporate Cloud)

Private cloud is a proprietary computing model that provides services to users who are behind
a firewall.
Advances in distributed computing and virtualization allowed administrators of network
and data centres to provide effective services that meets the needs of their ‘end users’ within the
organization.

3.1.4 Difference Between Public Cloud and Private Cloud

Cloud computing and storage are not new topics. Cloud is one of the most recognized terms
in the industry. As a service, it was offered, which earned recognition with Web 2.0. With the
evolution of the technology to the level today, cloud computing is offered as public and private
cloud services. We can distinguish between public and private cloud, and also customers can
understand the difference based on various factors such as a pattern of usability, security and
performance, which is insignificant with the costs.

3.1.5 Public versus Private Cloud

It is easy to distinguish between a private and the public cloud. The first difference will be the
deployment location. Cloud can be offered as a service over the WWW is a public cloud, whereas
a private cloud sits inside the firewall. The location of deployment is the main factor of distinction
between the two.
Public cloud is charged on a monthly basis. Customers pay for the usage based on data
size(GB) and for the bandwidth transfer fees. It is based on demand storage scalability and
customers need not buy a storage hardware.
Private cloud is deployed in the customer location, providing all necessary hardwares and
operating systems. The hard disk storage is shared only within the organization and is controlled
entirely by the enterprise. Because of scalability, customers can add servers to the existing
architecture. Furthermore, this architecture is fully managed by the customers.
40 TYPES OF CLOUD

3.1.6 Factors for Public versus Private Cloud

Elementary expense: Private cloud architecture does not require heavy investment, it can be built
at a low budget by deploying the architecture effectively. Public cloud hosting is offered at an
affordable price of ` 3,000. Initial expenditure is less as the customers need not buy any hardware
or software.
Volume of data: Cloud storage’s advantage is its scalability options. Private cloud can initiate
from few TBs in size, also offering scalability out of capacity by adding additional nodes, where
public clouds are smaller. Also it is easy to back-up in a laptop or deploy an application of size
in few GBs.
Performance expectations: Private clouds are deployed within the firewall and are accessible
using an Ethernet. Every addition of nodes increases the performance for this type of cloud. The
only limitation to public cloud is accessibility via the Internet.
Some other factors include:
● Duration of data storage
● Access patterns and locations
● Security and data isolation
● Confidentiality and destruction of data
● SLAs (Service Level Agreements)
● In-house technical crew

3.2 CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE

3.2.1 Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Cloud computing infrastructure functions like an electricity grid. When you need light in a room,
you turn the switch on, the signal travels through the electricity grid, then power is transmitted
to your switch and you have light. A cloud computing infrastructure works similarly. Whenever
you need resources such as information on software, they are stored in a network called a cloud.
You can find it in your cloud computing infrastructure and pull it up. If someone else is in need of
the same information, then he or she can access it from that computer itself. Information is stored
in the cloud computing infrastructure instead of on the computer. Figure 3.1 shows the basic
infrastructure for a cloud, comprising of client and server machines. Application, platform and
infrastructure services are used by two machines. Servers deploy services and act as a provider,
whereas a client uses it and acts as a requestor.
Any business that requires multiple computers could benefit from a cloud computing infra-
structure. Any business, ranging from online sports betting to major corporations with operations
around the world, can personalize a cloud computing infrastructure to meet their specific needs.
It eliminates the need for individual employees to backup data regularly, because the network
administrator would be responsible for backing up data on the cloud computing infrastructure.
It also allows each employee to access the same information, which makes operations run much
more efficiently in an office environment.
 3.3 CLOUD APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE 41

Clients

Application

Platform

Infrastructure

Servers

Figure 3.1 Cloud Computing Infrastructure

One can get cloud computing infrastructure for his business, within the following five steps:
1. Choose on-demand technology which will be the foundation for your infrastructure.
2. Determine how your employees can access information from the infrastructure.
3. Prepare the infrastructure with the necessary software and hardware.
4. Set up each computer to access the infrastructure.
5. Integrate all aspects of the infrastructure so that all employees can participate in resource sharing.
Setting up a cloud computing infrastructure is an investment but improved efficiency will
make it worthwhile.

3.2.2 Status of Cloud Computing in India

India is the outsourcing capital of the world, but for cloud services it is far behind. Some compa-
nies are still in the application and platforms stage, and their share in lending to the cloud service
market in India is limited. This is because, infrastructure services require major investment and
also because of the unreliable facilities such as network and electricity. This has stunted the
growth of cloud computing services in India.
Tata Communications (TCS) announced an expansion in their cloud computing service
offerings, which was the first ever India-based cloud computing solution. In addition to the exist-
ing services, they added Instacompute and Instaoffice in their list of service offerings. This new
services expanded the company’s offerings in the cloud computing to deliver pay-as-you-use and
self-service IT application services.

3.3 CLOUD APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE

The latest technology in sharing of resources is cloud computing. It maintains large numbers of
servers and can be billed in terms of on-demand and pay-per-cycle. The end users have no idea
about the location of the servers in the cloud network.
42 TYPES OF CLOUD

Cloud computing is fully enabled by virtualization (hypervisors). A virtualized application

is an application that is combined with all the components for execution with an operating system.
This flexibility is advantageous to cloud computing and it is varies from other computing
such as grid or utility and SaaS. Launching new instances for an application is easy and it provides
the following:
● Scale up and down rapidly
● Increased fault tolerance
● Bring up development or test instances
● Speedier versions to the customer base
● Load and test an application
After deciding to deploy the application in a cloud computing environment, it is important
to avoid the ‘success disaster’. When your application becomes popular overnight, it may crash
under an unanticipated load. Therefore, it is important to design the application for the cloud
taking maximum advantage of the cloud environment.

3.3.1 Architectural Considerations

Designing an application and running it as a virtual application in a cloud computing environment
is different from designing it for on-premise deployment. An application ought to be designed
keeping in mind easy scalability, tolerate failures and incorporate management systems by suc-
cessful deployment within the cloud.

Scale
The potential offered by cloud computing is nearly unlimited in scalability. For this purpose,
some application design guidelines are discussed as follows:
Start simple: Avoid complex design, optimizations for simplicity and performance enhance-
ments. It is a good idea to start with easiest application and checks the scalability of the cloud.
Split application functions and couple loosely: Separate systems should be utilized for different
parts of program functionality and bypass the synchronous attachments between them.
Deployment cluster: Rather than a single system to serve all users, consider forming multiple
clusters, each processing a subtask of an application. This is often called as ‘sharing’.
The advantages of cloud computing in terms of scalability are as follows:
● Inexpensive testing
● Reduced risk
● Ability to segment the customer base
● Auto-scaling based on the application load

Fail
Sometimes and at some point, an application will fail. Some follow-ups should be considered
while designing on-premise or SaaS application such as ‘doomsday’ scenarios.
 SUMMARY 43

Get back up quickly: The launching of new application clusters in order to recover data quickly
must be automated.
Data considerations: When an application fails, data persistence and system cannot be ascertained.
It is advisable to move all data to persistent storage and confirm it is replicated and distributed to
ensure data preservation. The system state is restored and used for the recovery process, and thus
the system can be restarted from the point of failure.

Manage
The management of making the deploying cloud applications as virtual appliances is very easy.
The software which is needed for the entire lifecycle in the cloud should be brought by the appli-
ances. Managements workload is reduced because of deploying applications in cloud. It should
be developed in a systematic and consistent manner.
Operating system and middleware interface needs are to be combined while building
appliances. The management system performs a vital role in the testing and deployment process.
By automating the management and creation of appliances, one can tackle the most difficult and
expensive problem called variability. Variability is removed from the release management and
deployment process by producing a consistent appliance image. Chances of mistakes are reduced
due to removal of variability.
The advantages of designing the application in the cloud include the following:
● Cost reduction
● Reduced overheads
● Eliminates application sprawl
● Reduces the chance for errors

SUMMARY
❖ Cloud computing is advantageous for organizations to advance their IT functionality
without augmenting surplus infrastructure and software.
❖ Cloud computing can be classified into four types based on the location where the cloud
is hosted.
❖ Cloud computing offers six types of enterprise services.
❖ Public cloud is charged on a monthly basis.
❖ Private cloud is deployed in the client’s premises with all needed hardwares and OS.
❖ Private cloud architecture does not demand heavy investment, it can be assembled on a
limited budget and also deploying of architecture is not hard.
❖ Cloud storage advantage is its scalability options.
❖ The private clouds are installed within the firewall and are accessible using an Ethernet.
❖ The only limitation to public cloud accessibility is the Internet.
❖ Cloud computing infrastructure for enterprises can be done in five steps.
WORKING OF CLOUD
CHAPTER
4
COMPUTING
4.1 Trends in Computing

4.2 Cloud Service Models

4.3 Cloud Deployment Models

4.4 Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

4.5 Cloud Computing and Services: Pros and Cons

46 WORKING OF CLOUD COMPUTING

4.1 TRENDS IN COMPUTING

Information technology (IT) is evolving rapidly. It becomes outdated as fast as it evolves. Some
of the technological inventions are promising in the initial phases and fizzle out once they are
implemented, while others progress and gain popularity steadily. An IT professional will be
able to distinguish between the hype created by a product and the real success of a product.
This chapter discusses about different IT strategies and technologies, how the emerging
technologies can be adopted efficiently and how established technologies and strategies penetrate
the IT market and what are the economic outcomes of early adopters of these initiatives. IT pro-
fessionals calculate the potential risks involved in investing in these technologies by taking into
account the adoption trends and economic outcomes.

4.1.1 IT Maturity Analysis

Figure 4.1 compares the technologies based on two parameters—the current investment rate
and the current adoption rate. This assessment provides the success rate of the technology and
its deployment and also the organizations, that will find this technology beneficial. Thus, these
factors provide insight into how developed a technology is related to other technologies and how
rapidly it will expand in the market.

High Investment/Low High Investment/High

Adoption Adoption
06 01
04 02

03
Percentage Currently Investing

08

07

12 10 05
13
09

14 11

15
16

Low Investment/Low Low Investment/High

Adoption Adoption
Percentage with Technology in Place

Figure 4.1 IT Maturity Analysis

 4.1 TRENDS IN COMPUTING 47

The X-axis labelled ‘percentage with technology in place’ represents the rate of adoption.
The vertical axis is labelled ‘percentage currently investing’ represents the rate of investment.
In this analysis, the terms ‘low’ and ‘high’ are relative to the technologies that are being
developed. In the figure, the diagonal line represents technologies falling from low investment
and adoption to high investment and adoption rate. Technologies falling in the upper right corner
are more matured.
Figure 4.1 represents a chart with nine different parameters such as low, moderate and high
rate of investment; and low, moderate and high rate of adoption. Each technology falls in any one
of the nine parameters.
● High rate of investment/adoption: ERP, business intelligence systems, CRM systems and
enterprise collaboration falls under this sector.
● Moderate rate of investment/high rate of adoption: Systems like human resource manage-
ment systems (HRMS) fall in this sector.
● High rate of investment/moderate rate of adoption: When there is an increase in investment
than the adoption, it results in growth of technology. Windows 7 falls in this sector.
● Moderate rate of investment/moderate rate of adoption: Technologies such as legacy
system renewal, SaaS and unified communication fall in this category. These technologies
will grow in a slow and steady pace.
● High rate of investment/low rate of adoption: Mobile applications falls in this sector, which
has high rate of investment, but adoption rate is minimal.
● Low rate of investment/moderate rate of adoption: Supply chain management falls in
this sector.
● Low rate of investment/low rate of adoption: Technologies like virtualization (desktop),
tablet, IaaS, environmental management solutions and PaaS fall in this sector. When a tech-
nology has more capability, but adoption rate is low, then organizations will not be inter-
ested in adopting them.
Cloud computing technology changed its focus from industry to real-world problems. The
major trends that emerged in cloud computing technology are:
● Small, medium business and micro-business
● Supply chains management, media and digital content, and legacy systems
● On-the-fly access
● Hybrid cloud model
● Growth in stack-as-a-service

4.1.2 Technology Trends to Watch

Virtualization
Infrastructure, applications, server, desktop, storage, network and hardware compose virtualization.
Virtualization can supply extra power on demand and is compatible with today’s environmental
measures. For small and medium business (SMBs), virtualization affords incredibly easy migration.
Organizations need to review consolidation plans and check whether all virtualization
bases are covered without delay. IT organizations are in pressure to find out new ways to store
48 WORKING OF CLOUD COMPUTING

media using client-side virtualization concept. The virtual desktops that conceive a ‘thick client’
likeness by a ‘thin client’ consignment form a long, flexible workforce which decreases com-
plexity and simplifies measures in alignment, review and command by adopting to new client
virtualization.

Data Growth
According to Gartner, enterprise data growth is expected to increase more in the next five
years and 80% will remain unstructured. Due to this trend in the IT, the complexity will also
increase, despite continued budget constraints. More access will lead to more data, resulting
in increased compliance, backup, audit and security. To keep up with the tide, companies must
virtualize storage quickly, preparation of reduplication, calculate all data inputs, keep up the
needs, segments and prioritize data. Thin provisioning, data reduplication, automated tiering,
HSM (heterogeneous storage management) principles and virtual tapes are included in the key
technologies to manage the data growth.

Energy and Green IT

In Green IT, performance and its effectiveness will play a vital role. Corporate social responsibil-
ity will become a primary concern as the power issue moves up the food chain.

Complex Resource Tracking

Complex resource tracking monitors energy consumption made by resources and automatically
optimizes it by moving workloads dynamically. Organizations will have to manage new KPI
(knowledge power infrastructures) based on power and there will be a growing demand for new
vendors and skills.

Consumerization and Social Software

Social collaboration (wikis, blogs, Facebook, Twitter), social media (content sharing and aggre-
gation) and social validation (social ratings, rankings and commentary) will continue to be a
major force in shaping consumerization and the software, compelling organizations to focus
on early pattern detection and ‘collectiveness’. Establishing the rules of engagement, monitor-
ing and looking for signals, becoming active participants in the social web and including some
dimension to internal and external websites of the organizations, will need to respond to the
distributed social web in next two years.

4.2 CLOUD SERVICE MODELS

Figure 4.2 shows the various cloud service models such as software, platform and infrastructure.
Service models are types of services that are required by customers. Models are based on the
kind of operation and requirement of the business. A cloud service can be replaced with any one
of the following as Cloud * as a Service—‘Desktop, data, platform, IT, infrastructure, testing,
computing, security, software, testing, storage, hardware, database, etc.’
 4.2 CLOUD SERVICE MODELS 49

PaaS IaaS

SaaS

Figure 4.2 Cloud Service Models

4.2.1 Service Models

● SaaS (Software as a Service)
● PaaS (Platform as a Service)
● IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

SaaS
Provider of SaaS has full administrative rights for its application and responsible for activities
such as deployment, maintenance and update. This type is suitable for customers, who want
less management hassles and worries regarding installation of application, software and its
updation.
Figure 4.3 shows the levels of rights between the subscriber and the provider, i.e., SaaS
component stack and scope of control. From the figure, it is clear that a cloud provider has total
control over the hardware, middleware and operating system. It also has administrative control
over the application residing in the server. Cloud subscriber subscribes the service, it has limited
admin and user level control. Cloud users do not have control over the OS or the hardware.
SaaS subscribers can be individual users, users from organizations and users from enter-
prises. If the focus in on improving of the business, SaaS is the best option.

Component Stack
Cloud Subscriber

Application
Cloud Provider

Admin Control Limited Admin and

User Level Control
Middleware

Total Control Operating System No Control

Hardware

Figure 4.3 SaaS Component Stack and Scope of Control

50 WORKING OF CLOUD COMPUTING

By opting SaaS, replacing of old hardware and maintaining infrastructure can be avoided,
thus saving on time and cost of hiring of technical staff.
Applications, which supports productivity and collaboration are the best options. For
example, Google Apps. Other examples are as follows:
● Online project management apps such as Zoho Mail, Deskaway.
● CRM apps such as Salesforce.com, Impel CRM and Microsoft Dynamics.
● Cloud services such as Skydrive, Google Docs and Dropbox.
● Small and medium enterprises (SMEs)/small and medium business (SMBs) can user
services such ase EazeWork.

PaaS
PaaS is service, where application/software can be build, tested and deployed as a single unit.
PaaS is useful for application builders, developers, deployers and testers.
Figure 4.4 depicts rights of control between the subscriber and provider, i.e., PaaS
component stack and scope of control. From the figure, we can understand that the cloud provider
has total control over the hardware and operating system, admin control over the middleware and
no control over the application. A cloud subscriber subscribes to the services and has full admin
rights over the application deployed and minimal rights over the middleware. Cloud users do not
have control over the OS or the hardware.
PaaS consists of environment for developing applications, languages for writing programs,
compilers and tools for testing and deployment.
PaaS subscribers can be third party software vendors, individual developers and IT service
providers.
Users can opt for PaaS, if his/her focus is only on application development and to finishing
it before the deadline.
By opting PaaS, everything else (other than the application development) will be main-
tained by the provider.
Customers must choose the PaaS based on the platforms they work.
PaaS providers in India are Wolf Frameworks and OrangeScape. Developers working on
PHP can choose PHP Fog or/and CloudControl.

Cloud Provider Cloud Subscriber

Application e.g., Mail Admin Control

No Control
Program to Interfaces
Admin Control Middleware e.g., Java

Operating System
No Control
Total Control
Hardware

Figure 4.4 PaaS Component Stack and Scope of Control

 4.2 CLOUD SERVICE MODELS 51

Component Stack

Application

Cloud Subscriber
Cloud Provider

No Control Total Control

Middleware

Admin Control Make Requests

Guest OS
Total Control No Control
Hypervisor

Hardware

Figure 4.5 IaaS Component Stack and Scope of Control

IaaS
When the customer requires an end-to-end infrastructure such as computer resources, storages
and network, he/she can opt for IaaS. The usage fee is billed at CPU hour, size (GB) of data
accessed or stored/hour, bandwidth consumed, etc. Figure 4.5 depicts the IaaS component stack
and scope of control.
Figure 4.5 depicts the rights of control between a subscriber and a provider, that is, IaaS
component stack and scope of control. From the figure, it is clear that cloud provider has total
control only over the hardware and has admin rights for virtualization part, that is, hypervisor. He/
she has no control over the application, middleware and guest operating system. Cloud subscriber
subscribes the service and has full admin rights for the application deployed, middleware and the
OS. Cloud users can make requests to hypervisor but don’t have control over the hardware.
Enterprises comprising of many servers can act as an IaaS provider such as Facebook,
Orkut and Twitter.
IaaS is very useful for beginners, who are not in a position to predict the success rate of
their application. IaaS customers can choose between different OS, databases and platforms.
IaaS providers in India are Amazon, Rackspace, Joyent, GoGrid, Verizon Teeremark and
Rightscale. NetMagic Solutions and InstaCompute (from Tata Communications).

4.2.2 Cloud Service Models

Figure 4.6 depicts the levels of service provided by each service model. Service models are cat-
egorized into five types:
1. Business as a service
2. Software as a service
3. Platform as a service
4. Infrastructure as a service
5. Management as a service
52 WORKING OF CLOUD COMPUTING

BaaS SaaS PaaS IaaS MaaS

Services

Application

Platform

Infrastructure

Management

Figure 4.6 Cloud Service Models Comparison

Other aspects of cloud service models are as follows:

● It provides management as a part of the service. Managing multiple services, service models
and on-premise applications and systems are management functions of large organizations.
● An infrastructure service from a cloud service provider, which can be built on top of your
applications and services, and if a development platform is required, you can build this on
the infrastructure service as well.
● A platform service includes the required infrastructure service to support the platform.
● An application (software) service includes the overall infrastructure and platform services
to support the application.
● Business process systems facilitate the development of business processes including business
process inventory, definition, development, deployment, management and measurement.
Probably the most interesting part are the service layers. Services (web services or business
services) are reusable technical components made available internally and/or externally either to
be consumed or to create new business processes and applications. Creating these reusable func-
tions makes the business to be less reliant upon IT thus changing the existing systems to provide
new functionality. Using Saas or BaaS layer, new functionality can be created by developing
new service using the existing services. This is the definition of the services layer represented in
Figure 4.6, it is a web or business service, which provides reusable technical components.

4.3 CLOUD DEPLOYMENT MODELS

The cloud is a simplified representation of the convoluted, internet-worked systems and attach-
ments that form the Internet. Private and public clouds are defined based on their relationship and
as a subset of the Internet, and also it is referred as internal or external clouds. The differentiation
is based on the relationship of the cloud with the enterprise.
 4.4 PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING 53

Hybrid Off-premises
SaaS IaaS IaaS
IaaS SaaS
PaaS SaaS Public/External
Private/ Public/Internal
Internal PaaS
PaaS

On-premises The Cloud

Figure 4.7 Cloud Deployment Models

The public and private cloud concepts are important because they support cloud computing.
While working on the cloud, the user may not have to know about the technology or where
about of the service provider’s infrastructure. Cloud also supports resources in terms of dynamic,
scalable, virtualized versions by paying some fee.

4.3.1 Cloud Computing Deployment Models

Many types of cloud deployment models are available; they are private, public and hybrid mod-
els as shown in Figure 4.7. Private cloud is an on-premises or internal cloud setup, whereas
public cloud is off-premises or external one. Both private and public cloud set-up may provide
three different services, that is SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. NIST (National Institute of Standards and
Technology) provides a standard definition for cloud computing and its models.
Public cloud is a widely used model, where infrastructure comprising of hardware systems,
networks, storages and applications are owned by the provider. If the organization is in need of
security for their applications, they can opt for private cloud, which is behind the firewall and
can be accessed only by customers belonging to that organization. Hybrid cloud solution is a
combination of both public and private clouds.

4.4 PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

4.4.1 Risks in the Cloud

Cloud computing has many benefits as much as the risks associated with it. The risks should be
analysed carefully before making a decision to apply cloud computing in the business.
For any IT organization privacy and security are the two major concerns. This should be
considered and checked thoroughly while moving to cloud, both as a consumer as well as a ven-
dor. Instances regarding security concerns in cloud computing are epic.org, Salesforce.com and
Google Docs.
Currently, no standards are set for operations between various cloud providers. Cloud con-
sumers must be aware of these issues while moving to cloud ecosystem.