What
the cloud is? Generally cloud means “A visible mass of condensed water
vapor floating in the atmosphere, typically high above the ground”.
Clouds have different types and have their own specific attributes and
behaviors. On the same cloud spectrum, stated earlier, the term ‘cloud’
was opted in information technology (IT) and on the basis of different
attributes, cloud have different types like public, private and hybrid.
IT
clouds have various services like ‘vapors’ and it make cloud by highly
knitted attributes and support. The concept of ‘as-a-service’ means that
everything in cloud, used or supported is ‘as-a-service’ like
hardware-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service,
network-as-a-service, vendor-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service;
while consolidating it would become ‘everything-as-a-service’ or XaaS
shared over a network that is the Internet.
Why
we need cloud? The reason is evolution of information technology which
leads to transform digitalization from information-age to cloud-age, a
rich, better and convenient model with maximum availability of
resources. The cloud is not only the technology but the need of
digital-age, as IT architecture has evolved enough to cater digitization
of every bit over a uniform platform. The main theme of information
transformation is to keep data live and available, either on the go.
These services are available through a browser either used at desktop,
laptop, tablet, phablet or a cellular / smart phone.
To
ensure information availability at maximum, a multitenant service setup
has been developed with controlled cost factor for ‘end user’ or
business. One (entity) has to pay as per its usage or pay-as-you-grow.
Thus, hardware, software, platform and vendors’ cost diminishes and
would benefit the business or end-user; due to reduction in CapEx /
OpEx.
The
history repeats itself!! Yes. Just have a look while mainframe machines
were used to support a number of ‘dump’ terminals, having no processor
or storage, except the standard input/output. Rest of the services
acquired and managed by the mainframes. On one side it reduced the cost
of manageability and it also cut the operating expenses on the other
hand.
New
paradigm of virtualization also based upon the same concept. It reduces
the hardware cost (which is really a big obstacle to purchase, manage
and keep live) and ensures maximization of information availability. The
virtual market has various plans to opt for standard plans or one may
customize it according to their needs.
Problems
are common and part of everyone’s life either individual or business.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) made life easy as it transforms
these problems into integrated services to provide a solution.
Everything-as-a-service in cloud, use the well established standards and
best international practices to ensure availability, service deliveries
in cloud with ease of mind, globally.
As
the other good things, cloud has its own characteristics like its
agile, multitenant, location independent, virtualized, secure and
reliable with good performance matrix.
Cloud
can be of different types as mentioned earlier, it can be a public,
private or hybrid. Their roles can easily be understood as their names
intends. One more type is community cloud which also a subset of hybrid
cloud and used for a specific or target oriented approach like law,
governance, risk or security)
Everything
has a combination of good and bad attributes. So the cloud has also
some issues and the organizations are working on it to remove the
red-flags from this technology as inevitable. These downsides includes
privacy issues (the hot and the biggest flag), legal, compliance and
security and IT governance.
Enjoy some ‘cloud’ quotes which has some lesson or motivation, if we could get…
“I
don’t need a hard disk in my computer if I can get to the server
faster… carrying around these non-connected computers is byzantine by
comparison.” – Steve Jobs, late chairman of Apple
“If
you think you’ve seen this movie before, you are right. Cloud computing
is based on the time-sharing model we leveraged years ago before we
could afford our own computers. The idea is to share computing power
among many companies and people, thereby reducing the cost of that
computing power to those who leverage it. The value of time share and
the core value of cloud computing are pretty much the same, only the
resources these days are much better and more cost effective.” – David Linthicum, author, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise
“We
believe we’re moving out of the Ice Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial
Age, the Information Age, to the participation age. You get on the Net
and you do stuff. You IM (instant message), you blog, you take pictures,
you publish, you podcast, you transact, you distance learn, you
telemedicine. You are participating on the Internet, not just viewing
stuff. We build the infrastructure that goes in the data center that
facilitates the participation age. We build that big friggin’ Webtone
switch. It has security, directory, identity, privacy, storage, compute,
the whole Web services stack.” - Scott McNealy, former CEO, Sun Microsystems
If
you remembered the title, you must be waiting for the rain… Hmm you
must wait for weather to get cloudier..!! See you shortly when rain gets
start!!
