Cloud computing Basics
A manager asked me: “There are many consultants promoting “cloud computing” and “software as a service”. They all say that they can help my company save money. I am not sure about their promises and confused about these terminology. Could you explain it in the basic thing possible?”
Answer: “Cloud computing” is a marketing term that explain the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product. Everything you need such as software, hardware, and resources can be provided by a service provider company to your company over a network (typically the Internet). Basically you “Rent” instead of “Buy” computing software, hardware and resources based on your own usage and it may save you some money.
With cloud computing, your company can get almost everything deliver over the internet based on a fee for services. With cloud computing, you do not have to buy hardware, software or hire information technology people to support your company’s computing needs. Almost everything you need can be provided and supported by the service provider company.
For many years, to take advantage of information technology, company would have to create an Information Technology (IT) group to manage hardware, software and provide supports to the business. The IT group buys computers, servers, infrastructures, and software. They install software, update software, back up data and maintain servers etc. Therefore the IT group is a cost to the company. If they mismanage, the cost can grow out of control and it reduces profit of the company. By having another company provides this IT service instead of your own group, you can reduce the cost because the overall IT cost is distributed among several customers. Service providers can optimized their services better than the in-house group. According to several studies, this trend is happening now and it will continue to grow worldwide because the cost reduction needs.
There are three types of cloud computing services: The most popular is the “Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). It focuses on providing customers with business-specific software services such as e-mail, office document supports, applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) etc. The second type is known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). It focuses on providing customers with computational infrastructure and storage over the internet. It allows organizations and developers to extend their IT infrastructure on an “on-demand” basis. The third type is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). It focuses on providing application development platforms to allow customers to leverage the resources of established organizations to create and host applications of a larger scale than an individual or small business would be able to handle.
Today all large software companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon etc. are providing some of these capability to customers. There are two perspectives of cloud computing based on who can access resources can be characterized as public cloud and private cloud.
In public clouds, resources are offered as a service for a pay-per-usage fee, usually over an internet connection. Customers can scale their use on demand and do not need to purchase hardware to use the service. Public cloud companies will manage the infrastructure and resources required by its users.
In private clouds, resources are deployed inside a firewall and managed by the user organization. It is the user organization that owns the software and hardware infrastructure and that manages the cloud and controls access to its resources. Typically, those resources and services are not shared outside the organization. This is similar to having your own IT group managing the computing need. Since it is inside your company, it is more secure.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
