Cloud Computing:The Way Forward?

Dr. Nabil Sultan

What is cloud computing?• 22 possible separate definitions of

cloud!! (McKinsey study)• Commonly used definition:

“clusters of distributed computers (largely vast data centers and server farms) which provide on-demand resources and services over a networked medium (usually the Internet).”

Where did the word “cloud” come from?• In 2006 Eric Schmidt of Google

described Google Software as “cloud computing” at a search engine conference.

• The term cloud is a metaphor for the Internet, possibly inspired by cloud images in computing text books.

Internet

Internet

What can cloud computing offer?

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Products offered via this modeinclude the remote delivery (through the Internet) of a full computer infrastructure (e.g., virtual computers, virtual servers, storage devices, etc.);

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): Products offered via this mode include the ability to develop and host software remotely. For example, you can (remotely) develop Web solutions and host them on Web servers running Server Operating Systems (e.g., Windows 2003, Apache).

• Software as a Service (SaaS): Under this layer, applications aredelivered through the medium of the Internet as a service. This type of cloud service offers a complete application functionality that ranges from productivity applications (e.g., office-type) to programs such as those for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or enterprise-resource management (ERM).

Cloud computing: a new computing service paradigm?

• Services delivered dynamically on a pay-as-you-go basis.

• Timesharing. Cloud computing = Timesharing 2.0 ! (Campbell, 2009)

• Predated in the 1990s by Application Service Provision (ASP) which was delivered via the Internet. ASP did not survive due to proprietary protocols and slow and expensive Internet connections.

Underlying Technologies of the Cloud• Web Services or Remote Application Service

Provision • Grid Computing (the provision of compute

power through linking computers together –in a grid- and then “pooling” their CPU resources to achieve high performance compute/processing power)

• Virtualization (the creation of instances of virtual machines - e.g., virtual servers, virtual desktops - and their software – e.g., operating systems, applications – that behave exactly like the real thing).

Major Cloud Platforms

• Amazon’s Elastic Compute (EC2)• Amazon’s Simple Storage (S3)• IBM’s Smart Business portfolio• Google’s Google Apps• Microsoft’s Azure• Saleforce.com’s CRM clouds (e.g.,

Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Force.com)

Main Concerns Relating to Cloud Computing (1)• Vendor Lock-in (most cloud providers

produce their own proprietary Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

• Security of Data• Data Protection (some regions specify

geographical limits for the movements of personal data)

• Sudden Unavailability of Service (i.e., outages)

• Loss of Jobs?

Main Concerns Relating to Cloud Computing (2)• Outages:

Salesforce.com left customers without service for 6 hin February 2008

Amazon’s S3 (simple storage service) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) suffered a 3-h outage in the same month a few days later and an 8-h outage in July of the same year by S3 (Leavitt, 2009).

In early 2009, Google’s Gmail went down for 3 h, thus preventing its 113 million users from accessing their emails or the documents which they store online as “Google Docs” (Naughton, 2009).

What is being done to address these concerns?• Amazon is making its S3 (simple storage service) cloud

available through both SOAP and REST while Microsoft ensured that its Azure cloud also supports REST.

• Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) :(http://www.cloudforum.org) promoting interoperability.

• Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) (http://www.dmtf.org)

• Hybrid-Cloud solutions: For example, a company could use its own resources to store data securely but rely on public cloud services (e.g., Amazon’s EC2) for other computing functions.

• Private (In-house) Cloud (some say this is not cloud computing)!

Who could benefit from cloud computing?

• Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

• Educational Institutions

• Organizations engaged in Scientific Research

• Large companies?!

SMEs and the Cloud (1)

• Survey by the European Network and Information Security (ENISA), an EU agency found:

68% of the SME responses indicated that avoiding capital expenditure in hardware, software, IT support and information security was behind their possible engagement in cloud computing;

64% of the SME responses also indicated that flexibility and scalability of IT sources was the reason (ENISA, 2009).

SMEs and the Cloud (2)

• Survey conducted by Easynet Connect (a small UK internet solution provider) has shown that UK SMEs are increasingly eager to adopt cloud computing (Stening, 2009):

47% planning to do so within the next five years.

35% of them cited cost savings as the key driver

• Another survey by Gooroo (a small UK cloud provider) reveals similar results.

Educational Institutes & the Cloud

• An increasing number of educational establishments have opted to use cloud computing.

• In the UK, academic institutes using cloud computing include:

Leeds Metropolitan University, the University of Glamorgan, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Westminster, the London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Liverpool Hope University.

University of Westminster(Case Study) (Sultan, 2010; JISC, 2009)

• Prior to using Google Apps (free version for education):• 96% of students were setting up their own personal email

accounts (due to frequent problems with the university’s email system)

• With Google Apps (rolled out for 2008/9 academic year)• the University made a saving £1,000,000 (in terms of

installation, ongoing maintenance, upgrades, staff costs, licenses, servers, storage, etc.).

• Student got a reliable email system; were able to have personalised email addresses; were able to keep their email addresses (even after graduation), were able to use Google Apps’s other features (chat, storage, productivity applications that support collaboration)

UK SME: Dot Net Solutions(Case Study)(Sultan, 2010b, Microsoft, 2009)

• The company describes itself as: “A Microsoft-focused SME specializing in delivering technically complex development projects on cutting edge technologies”

• When developing its projects it used the “Scrum” approach (pasting sticky labels on the wall). It proved problematic (having to photo them and send to clients)!

• The company then replaced this manual method with its own software (called “Scrumwall”) using Microsoft Silverlight technology. The software mimics the “scrum” method but has a web-based interface for clients to see the development of their systems.

• The company used Microsoft’s Azure platform to host its software (initially free but eventually on a pay-as-you-go basis).

The “green” credentials of cloud computing • Less money to spend on electricity (for

powering machines and cooling the rooms that house them).

• Research suggests that ICT is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions (and likely to increase).

• UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment and EU Energy Using Products Directive are likely to put pressure on companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

Famous Quotes

• Richard Stallman (creator of the GNU operating system and founder of the Free Software Foundation): “It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign” (The Guardian, quoted by Johnson, 2009)

• Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle) described cloud computing as “fashion-driven” and “complete gibberish” and commented that it would be hard to make money in this technology which he sees as “lacking a clear business model”

Bill Gates & Internet

• Bill Gates (Chairman of Microsoft) in the early 1990s did not think much of the Internet!

• What happened then?

Podcast

Interview with:Dan Scarf (CEO of Do Net Solutions) & Steve Clayton (Director, Cloud Strategy,

Microsoft International) • Source: Financial Times:http://podcast.ft.com/index.php?sid=21&pid=621

Bibliography• Campbell, S (2009), ‘Timesharing 2.0’, HPCwire,

http://www.hpcwire.com/specialfeatures/cloud_computing/features/Timesharing-20-66169142.html (Accessed on: 5 April, 2010).

• Financial Times (2009), “Getting to grips with the cloud”, http://podcast.ft.com/index.php?sid=21&pid=621 (accessed on: 15 December 2009).

• JISC (2009), ‘Outsourcing Email and Data Storage: Case Studies’.• Johnson, B. (2008), ‘Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman,

The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman (accessed on: 5 July 2009).

• Leavitt, N. (2009). Is cloud computing really ready for prime time? Computer, 42(1),15–20.

• Microsoft (2009), “Case Studies: Do Not Solutions”, http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000004847 (Accessed: 15 December 2009).

• Naughton, J. (2009). There’s silver lining to Google’s cloud computing glitch. TheObserver. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/01/gmail-outagecloud-computing (accessed on 21 July 2009).

• Stening, C. (2009). “Every cloud has a Silver Lining”, easynetconnect, http://www.easynetconnect.net/portals/0/downloadfiles/industryinsight/industrynews/Cloud-computing-website-article-final.pdf (accessed on: 18 July 2009).

• Sultan, N (2010), ‘Cloud Computing for Education: A New dawn?’, International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 30, No. 2.

• Sultan, N (2010a), ‘Cloud computing: making headway with the scientific community’, High Performance Computing, Nova Publishing.

• Sultan, N (2010b), ‘The Power of the Cloud in the Hands of SMEs’, International Journal of Services Technology and Management, In Peer-Review Process.

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