What is Cloud Computing?
Essentially, cloud computing is Internet-based development and use of computer technology. The cloud is a metaphor for a diffuse, unspecified collection of resources and data, such the Internet. The metaphor is apt because the core benefit of cloud computing is that you don’t need to know what is in the “cloud”. You don’t want to know, the cloud develops, grows, is updated over time – but this has nothing to do with you, the client, the cloud is just ‘there’.
On a technical level, cloud computing comes from virtualisation technology that allows discrete computing resources, such as servers, to act as though they were multiple resources – known as virtual machines. The user’s applications are executed in the virtual machine. Virtualisation also allows the virtual machines to move from physical server to physical server, rending the collection of physical resources as though it were one – a cloud.
Access to the ‘cloud’ can then be provided to employees of the same company – known as a private or internal cloud, but more generally are offered to third parties on a pay-as-you go basis. A number of companies provide cloud services.
The benefits of outsourcing computation in this manner stem from the flexibility of the approach. Capital expenditure is next to nil – there is no need to purchase expensive hardware and the operating costs are also reduced by the reduced need for an in-house IT department. As use is pay per go, low users have potentially large savings. As use is also flexible, clients receive resources as and when they need them. This gives companies the ability to expand at the rate of the growth in business, and also to easily reduce capacity in the case of a reduction in business. This agility can be a source of competitive advantage and reduces the advantage that large companies have over SMEs.
In addition to outsourcing the infrastructure on which a client runs applications, the user can also outsource the running of those applications. The applications are run remotely on the provider’s hardware and the user pays for use. Applications provided this way are said to be in the cloud, or to be Software as a service (SaaS). This has the same benefits as cloud computing but further reduces up front expenditure on licenses and the operating costs of managing and updating the applications. In both cloud computing and SaaS, the user benefits often benefits from more up to date hardware and software than may otherwise be available.
Providers of both cloud computing and SaaS benefit from economies of scale and there is a strong business driver for eliminating idleness. The computation is provided in datacenters with many thousands of machines serving hundreds of clients. As a consequence, the total cost of IT is reduced and this cost saving is passed on to the consumer. Furthermore, there is an overall reduction in energy consumption which benefits the environment.
Cloud computing, in its various forms, including Software-as-a- Service has seen very high growth in the last few years, across a number of sectors, as testified by a number of case studies available. Beyond the general benefits described above, there are a number of concrete benefits when it has been applied not merely from a convenience or cost basis but because cloud computing solves a specific challenge which no other technology can solve in a cost effective manner.
Read on ...
- Cloud Computing case Studies: The IT-tude.com guide to successful businesses using cloud computing today.
- The benefits of cloud computing. IT-Tude maintains an up to date selection of the best articles tackling this issue from multiple perspectives.
- Cloud computing providers. This IT-Tude article describes the top Cloud Computing Providers.
- The history of Cloud Computing. Cloud computing ultimately is derived from many of the Grid technology initiatives of the past decade. This post from the IT-Tude blog explains the transition: Cloud Computing – a bolt out the blue? Not quite, the writing was on the wall
A Cloud Computing primer
by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems has recently published a whitepaper on Cloud Computing. Titled "Take your business to a higher level", this primer provides a very good overview of the evolution of networking, explaining how Grid/Cloud computing has reached today's business. The paper answers important questions about Clouds and highlights its benefits, innovations and technical solutions; the whole being easy to read by non specialists.
« In many ways, cloud computing is simply a metaphor for the Internet, the increasing movement of compute and data resources onto the Web. But there’s a difference: cloud computing represents a new tipping point for the value of network computing. It delivers higher efficiency, massive scalability, and faster, easier software development. It’s about new programming models, new IT infrastructure, and the enabling of new business models. »
Read the whole cloud computing primer by Sun
