UNIT-1

BCA613: Cloud Computing

Introducing Cloud Computing: Defining the Cloud, Comparing Cloud Providers with
Traditional IT Service Providers, Understanding the Nature of the Cloud, Discovering
the Value of the Cloud for Business, Developing Your Cloud Strategy

Introducing Cloud Computing: -

The term cloud refers to a network or the internet. It is a technology that uses remote servers on the internet to store,
manage, and access data online rather than local drives. The data can be anything such as files, images, documents, audio,
video, and more.
Small as well as large IT companies, follow the traditional methods to provide the IT infrastructure. That means for any IT
company, we need a Server Room that is the basic need of IT companies.
Cloud computing is believed to have been invented by J. C. R. Licklider in the 1960s with his work on ARPANET to connect
people and data from anywhere at any time.
Characteristics of Cloud Computing
The characteristics of cloud computing are given below:
1) Agility: -
The cloud works in a distributed computing environment. It shares resources among users and works very fast.
2) High availability and reliability
The availability of servers is high and more reliable because the chances of infrastructure failure are minimum.
3) High Scalability
Cloud offers "on-demand" provisioning of resources on a large scale, without having engineers for peak loads.
4) Multi-Sharing
With the help of cloud computing, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reductions by sharing
common infrastructure.
5) Device and Location Independence
Cloud computing enables the users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they
use e.g. PC, mobile phone, etc. As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet,
users can connect from anywhere.
6) Maintenance
Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, since they do not need to be installed on each user's computer and
can be accessed from different places. So, it reduces the cost also.
7) Low Cost
By using cloud computing, the cost will be reduced because to take the services of cloud computing, IT company need not
to set its own infrastructure and pay-as-per usage of resources.
8) Services in the pay-per-use mode
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are provided to the users so that they can access services on the cloud by using
these APIs and pay the charges as per the usage of services.

Comparing Cloud Providers with Traditional IT Service Providers: -

1. Cloud Computing :
Cloud Computing, as name suggests, is collective combination of configurable system resources and advanced service that
can be delivered quickly using internet. It simply provides lower power expenses, no capital costs, no redundancy, lower
employee costs, increased collaboration, etc. It makes us more efficient, more secure, and provide greater flexibility.
2. Traditional Computing:
Traditional Computing, as name suggests, is a possess of using physical data centers for storing digital assets and running
complete networking system for daily operations. In this, access to data, or software, or storage by users is limited to device
or official network they are connected with. In this computing, user can have access to data only on system in which data is
stored.

Cloud Computing Traditional Computing

It refers to delivery of different services such as data

It refers to delivery of different services on local server.
and programs through internet on different servers.

It takes place on third-party servers that is hosted by

It takes place on physical hard drives and website servers.
third-party hosting companies.

It is ability to access data anywhere at any time by

User can access data only on system in which data is stored.
user.
Cloud Computing Traditional Computing

It is more cost effective as compared to tradition

It is less cost effective as compared to cloud computing
computing as operation and maintenance of server is
because one has to buy expensive equipment’s to operate and
shared among several parties that in turn reduce cost
maintain server.
of public services.

It is less user-friendly as compared to cloud computing

It is more user-friendly as compared to traditional
because data cannot be accessed anywhere and if user has to
computing because user can have access to data
access data in another system, then he need to save it in
anytime anywhere using internet.
external storage medium.

It requires fast, reliable and stable internet connection It does not require any internet connection to access data or
to access information anywhere at any time. information.

It provides more storage space and servers as well as

more computing power so that applications and It provides less storage as compared to cloud computing.
software run must faster and effectively.

It also provides scalability and elasticity i.e., one can

increase or decrease storage capacity, server It does not provide any scalability and elasticity.
resources, etc., according to business needs.

It requires own team to maintain and monitor system that will

Cloud service is served by provider’s support team.
need a lot of time and efforts.

Software is offered as an on-demand service (SaaS) Software in purchased individually for every user and requires
that can be accessed through subscription service. to be updated periodically.

Discovering the Value of the Cloud for Business: -

Types of Cloud
There are the following 4 types of cloud that you can deploy according to the organization's needs-
Public Cloud
Public cloud is open to all to store and access information via the Internet using the pay-per-usage method.
In public cloud, computing resources are managed and operated by the Cloud Service Provider (CSP).
Example: Amazon elastic compute cloud (EC2), IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Microsoft, Google App Engine, Windows Azure
Services Platform.
Private Cloud
Private cloud is also known as an internal cloud or corporate cloud. It is used by organizations to build and manage their own
data centers internally or by the third party.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid Cloud is a combination of the public cloud and the private cloud. we can say:
Hybrid Cloud = Public Cloud + Private Cloud
Hybrid cloud is partially secure because the services which are running on the public cloud can be accessed by anyone, while
the services which are running on a private cloud can be accessed only by the organization's users.
Example: Google Application Suite (Gmail, Google Apps, and Google Drive), Office 365 (MS Office on the Web and One Drive),
Amazon Web Services.
Community Cloud
Community cloud allows systems and services to be accessible by a group of several organizations to share the information
between the organization and a specific community. It is owned, managed, and operated by one or more organizations in
the community, a third party, or a combination of them.
Example: Health Care community cloud

Developing Your Cloud Strategy: -

A cloud strategy is an action plan for achieving success in the cloud. Your strategy will define the role of cloud within your
organization — and should exist in a living document that you update and share with the rest of your team.
1. Establish a Vision for Cloud Strategy
Establish the purpose of cloud adoption early in the process.
It starts by analyzing your current business status. You can use brainstorming sessions and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats analysis) analysis. You can also include cloud assessments.
2. Understand Cloud Models & Services

3. Business Objectives & Cloud Service Strategy

Cloud services should help achieve your unique business goals.
Analyze which applications should be optimized using the cloud. For example, applications that require high security but
low latency can stay on-premise. In contrast, applications with heavy workloads are moved to the cloud.
4. Cloud Strategy Team Collaboration
Companies make the mistake of not using cross-functional teams. Expertise from HR, finance, and legal is helpful for the
strategy.
Teams should see how cloud services benefit their specific departments.
The cloud migration team will require a diverse skill set. Some will only focus on migration. Other teams will focus
on innovation & costs.
5. Investment Strategy
Around 82% of survey respondents said that cloud spendings are one of the main challenges in enterprise cloud computing.
With an increase in cloud budgets, cloud waste is also expanding.
You must work with the IT & finance leaders to devise the investment strategy.
6. Risk Assessment
The strategy document should identify potential risks and ways to reduce them. Major cloud providers do secure the services.
However, it is the company’s responsibility to secure its data & applications.
7. Exit Strategy
An exit strategy defines how to move away from the cloud. It ensures that cloud services are replaced without damaging
business operations.
Understanding the Nature of the Cloud: -
What's inside the cloud? In this part, we examine a highly scaled computing environment. Because that environment is front
and center, we look at the technical foundation for this model, including workloads and data services.
Imagine if you could be interconnected and access programs and data from anywhere?
A virtualized environment is where the hardware is acting as a support system for virtual servers to float in between multiple
different pieces of hardware. Hence the term cloud, because information is floating between various devices.
Cloud computing is where services such as software applications, data storage and processing capacity are accessed over the
Internet instead of your own computer. In order to do this a company uses a datacenter as a central backup. The most
common services in cloud computing are the following:
• Software as a Service (SaaS): This can be anything from CRM solution, email, communication.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): databases, web servers
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS: IaaS can also be referred to as hardware as a service or hosting layer. It includes:
servers, storage, network connection. The cloud can connect segments of a network so that devices can access
information from anywhere.
top three benefits of cloud computing
1. Reliability: The cloud is designed around reliability and elasticity. One can ask how wide can your datacenter be?
The elasticity of networks should be able to stretch as far wide as they have to. On top of stretching horizontally the
infrastructure should be able to scale vertically as well.
2. Increased storage: It allows you to increase storage dynamically on the fly, without having to procure, install, and
setup new hardware every time you approach your storage quota.
3. Reduced costs: Instead of having a private network you can rent space from a public cloud. Which has allowed
people to start their business on a public cloud and then migrate into a private cloud once needed. Many companies
begin with a public cloud option that has is the most cost effective and cuts down on deployment time. A private
cloud option is often viewed as the most robust option, but at a higher price tag.