I am pretty excited to be part of the editorial team at Cloud Avenue and I can't wait for the great content that is going to show up in this space. Before I start blogging my thoughts about Cloud Computing, in general, and SaaS, in particular, I want to write a couple of posts that clears up the confusion surrounding the term cloud computing. This post will also serve as a reference pad for the arguments I will put forward in my future posts. I will first set the stage by briefly explaining what is cloud computing and, then, go about bursting some of the myths promoted by people who haven’t understood the paradigm properly and others whose businesses are threatened by this paradigm shift.
Simply put, cloud computing is the availability of computing resources as a service, over the internet, and, on demand through a highly scalable infrastructure. These computing services may be offered from a single high capacity data center or multiple data centers spread geographically all over the world or even through P2P protocols. When I say computing resources, it could be software applications offered as a service, programming platform offered as a service or raw computing power and storage offered as a service to the end users. There is quite a bit of confusion about how much we can stretch the usage of the term “cloud computing”.
If you host a website on a shared hosting or dedicated server, can we use this term? If you have data in your home machine and you access it using remote desktop or VPN, can we use the term cloud computing to refer this access? Are private clouds inside an organization’s firewall be considered as a part of the cloud computing paradigm? The answer is no, no and a big no.
The traditional web hosting doesn’t offer the high scalability needed for the cloud computing environment. In the case of remote desktop/VPN connection, the services are not offered through the internet to anyone who wants to use the service. Even though many people are talking about a cloud like scalable infrastructure inside the organizational firewall, it doesn’t fall into the cloud computing paradigm. There are few pundits who resist the idea of private clouds by arguing that the very definition of cloud computing requires it to be available publicly on the internet. Well, we could use this argument against the idea of private clouds but it then becomes a debate between one group against another about where to draw a line. I take a slightly different approach to debunk the idea of private clouds. The basic premise of cloud computing is that the computing resources are offered as a service to users. By building a cloud like architecture inside an organization’s firewall, they end up owning the infrastructure rather than renting the service based on their needs. This is no different from the traditional approach where the organizations build their own datacenters for their computing needs. It is just not cloud computing. Period.
I will once again repeat it for the sake of clarity. From an end user (either individuals or organizations) perspective, cloud computing is just a service where computing resources are offered through the internet and on demand. The end users pay for whatever they use much like what they do with utility companies offering electricity, water, etc..
When we talk about the computing resources offered as service, the next question that pops up in the mind of users is about the nature of services offered. Just to make it easy for the new entrants to the cloud computing arena, I will briefly explain various services offered under the cloud computing umbrella. It falls under the following three categories
Whether it is Productivity apps like Google or Zoho Docs, CRM apps like Salesforce.com, Platforms like Google App Engine or Infrastructure services like Amazon EC2, cloud computing has completely changed the computing landscape opening up vistas not available in the traditional desktop world. PaaS and Infrastructure service models has shaken up the startup business world and anyone with very little money to invest, can start a company and compete with giants like Google and Microsoft. When the paradigm shift happened from traditional postal mail to email, there was utter confusion and fears in the minds of consumers and business communities. We are seeing the same thing happening once again as we move from desktop world to the world of cloud computing. In this post, I think I have cleared up the confusion about the very definition of cloud computing. In my next post in this series, I will be clearing off various myths promoted by people who are ignorant about cloud computing and, also, by people whose business interests are threatened by the proliferation of cloud computing.
When you think of cloud computing, what do you imagine and expect? Are you using cloud based services or worried about the security and privacy issues? Feel free to share your thoughts on this topic. If you would like to debate on any of the points discussed in this post, feel free to share your thoughts.
There are some interesting deployments emerging where Cloud-vendors (if I can call them that) are deploying dedicated-cloud for Enterprises. In this case, Enterprises rent this private cloud (instead of owning them). This kind-of falls in the middle where larger companies rent the infrastructure that is designed to meet the needs of their company alone. My guess is, we will see this trend more and more. I wonder what this will be called - Dedicated-Cloud Computing? :)
If enterprises rent the service from cloud vendors instead of building the infrastructure on their own, the term "private clouds" could be used. Probably, "cloud slice" could be a better term :-)
You can see cloud-computing.buensitio.info directory with the same buckets and one more between iaas and paas. Good luck with the blog. Regards
Thanks for the link. It is pretty neat.
I am new to the term, so I appreciate the explanation. I do think that "private clouds" can be considered part of cloud computing, since they are providing services to their customers, their customers being their employees. I may have missed something, so please correct me if I misunderstood. The exception to what I said above would be if you consider cloud computing like an ecosystem. If you do, then the "private clouds" would be more like an aquarium or terrarium, contributing little or nothing to the general ecosystem, but taking from it. Anyway, thank you for the explanation. I am interested in seeing how education can make use of cloud computing.
Private clouds are not generally cloud computing because the whole notion of cloud computing is that the customer only pays for the service it needs when it needs it. The cloud is efficient as long as you have enough customers with different peak demands, so that resources that customer A used on Monday can be re-allocated to customer B on Tuesday. However, Krishnan misses the possibility that a large enterprise CAN create a private cloud that meets this definition. It is easy to imagine that IBM could have a private PaaS cloud that is shared by teams doing completely different activities, but with different demand patterns, so that the resource is used efficiently. IBM could very well have an internal billing mechanism such that departments are billed by the "Internal Cloud Service" based on their demand. Sounds to me like a cloud, even though HP can't use it...
leelalka, thanks for your comments. If we have to take your definition, then it becomes an issue of where we draw a line. I can host something on a single server in the traditional datacenter and still call it a cloud because it helps my customers (which may include my own employees too). Then, it becomes an endless debate of where to draw a line and it will never end. Building your own infrastructure, even if it is used by employees, defeats the whole purpose of cloud computing economics. It is my opinion that we need to look outside the box to settle the debate about where to draw a line on the cloud computing definition.
A <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/hosted_apps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210602225">related article</a>
[..] Cloud Computing: The myths, realities and everything else –Part 1& [..]
I wrote this in response to a Google Chrome OS article. Just replace the word Google with your favorite company. I am posting this writing to every site I can find concerning cloud computing. ======================= This is a technological trap to the nth degree. I see a endless myriad of problems with cloud computing that benefit nothing to anybody except hosts, hackers, terrorist, and the government. If you like the idea of cloud computing, then you like the idea of all your personal work and data in the hands of every google tech and even the company receptionist. Ones argument for cloud computing must be.. why worry about losing my work and identity, when I can just give it away. That copyright or patent request ain't gonna do ya much good after some enterprising google employee notices your million dollar idea and decides he'd rather not work for a living anymore cause it is now his million dollar idea and he has the patent to prove it. My data is on my system. For you to get it means you have to get past my firewall, install your malware, get past my encryptions, and hope I don't catch your program reporting back to you. Even then you only have access to what your malware is programmed to access. For you to get *ALL* my data in a cloud, all you have to do is hack my password. Duhhh. Also, if you like the idea of cloud computing, then you also like idea of working slower and slower. IP's are complaining that a small percentage of file sharers are hogging the majority of their bandwidth. Whats gonna happen when EVERYBODY becomes a 'file sharer' with every file they have? You also realize the video streamers are just getting started dontcha? And as it's been pointed out, what's going to happen when there's a outage? Your new high tech 'dumb terminal' is going to need a host ya know. And screw hacking your little pc. Hackers are gonna hack EVERYBODY in one shot! And what about that disgruntled google employee? Terrorists are now drooling at the prospect that we are consolidating all our resources into one handy target. In this age of identity theft, I CANNOT believe that somebody would trust ANY their info to be in one place (accept their home). Even a TRUSTED place (cause there is no such thing). Its unfathomable! What OS and processors do you think goggles runnin right now? Would that be the easily hackable combination of Windows on Intel? Just one hacker access into a major hosts password file and cloud computing will be gone forever. Along with that company. It WILL happen. Cloud computing will prove itself to be a 'company ender' and these companies are racing to beat each other to that end. Which they FULLY DESERVE for trying to pull such a stunt. Cloud computing has got to be the most irresponsable concepts ever put forth by ANY industry. It is a gigantic backwards step in the evolution of information security at a time when information security is almost non-existent. It is a inherently flawed concept that benefits NOBODY but hackers, terrorist, the government, and hosting companies (till they get hacked that is). Cloud computing will only be used by two groups of people.. people who believe tabloids, and full blown certifiable idiots.
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