CLOUD COMPUTING THE NEXT BIG THING

  What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is a term that is often bandied about the web these days and often attributed to different things that -- on the surface -- don't seem to have that much in common. So just what is Cloud Computing? I've heard it called a service, a platform, and even an operating system. Some even link it to such concepts as grid computing -- which is a way of taking many different computers and linking them together to form one very big computer.

A basic definition of cloud computing is the use of the Internet for the tasks you perform on your computer. The "cloud" represents the Internet.

Cloud Computing is a Service

The simplest thing that a computer does is allow us to store and retrieve information. We can store our family photographs, our favorite songs, or even save movies on it. This is also the most basic service offered by cloud computing.

Flickr is a great example of cloud computing as a service. While Flickr started with an emphasis on sharing photos and images, it has emerged as a great place to store those images. In many ways, it is superior to storing the images on your computer.

First, Flickr allows you to easily access your images no matter where you are or what type of device you are using. While you might upload the photos of your vacation to Greece from your home computer, you can easily access them from your laptop while on the road or even from your iPhone while sitting in your local coffee house.

Second, Flickr lets you share the images. There's no need to burn them to a compact disc or save them on a flash drive. You can just send someone your Flickr address.

Third, Flickr provides data security. If you keep your photos on your local computer, what happens if your hard drive crashes? You'd better hope you backed them up to a CD or a flash drive! By uploading the images to Flickr, you are providing yourself with data security by creating a backup on the web. And while it is always best to keep a local copy -- either on your computer, a compact disc or a flash drive -- the truth is that you are far more likely to lose the images you store locally than Flickr is of losing your images.

This is also where grid computing comes into play. Beyond just being used as a place to store and share information, cloud computing can be used to manipulate information. For example, instead of using a local database, businesses could rent CPU time on a web-based database.

The downside? It is not all clear skies and violin music. The major drawback to using cloud computing as a service is that it requires an Internet connection. So, while there are many benefits, you'll lose them off if you are cut off from the Web.

Cloud Computing is a Platform

The web is the operating system of the future. While not exactly true -- we'll always need a local operating system -- this popular saying really means that the web is the next great platform.

What's a platform? It is the basic structure on which applications stand. In other words, it is what runs our apps. Windows is a platform. The Mac OS is a platform. But a platform doesn't have to be an operating system. Java is a platform even though it is not an operating system.

Through cloud computing, the web is becoming a platform. With trends such as Office 2.0, we are seeing more and more applications that were once the province of desktop computers being converted into web applications. Word processors like Buzzword and office suites like Google Docs are slowly becoming as functional as their desktop counterparts and could easily replace software such as Microsoft Office in many homes or small offices.

But cloud computing transcends Office 2.0 to deliver applications of all shapes and sizes from web mashups to Facebook applications to web-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games. With new technologies that help web applications store some information locally -- which allows an online word processor to be used offline as well -- and a new browser called Chrome to push the envelope, Google is a major player in turning cloud computing into a platform.

Cloud Computing and Interoperability

A major barrier to cloud computing is the interoperability of applications. While it is possible to insert an Adobe Acrobat file into a Microsoft Word document, things get a little bit stickier when we talk about web-based applications.

This is where some of the most attractive elements to cloud computing -- storing the information on the web and allowing the web to do most of the 'computing' -- becomes a barrier to getting things done. While we might one day be able to insert our Google Docs word processor document into our Google Docs spreadsheet, things are a little stickier when it comes to inserting a Buzzword document into our Google Docs spreadsheet.

Ignoring for a moment that Google probably doesn't want you to have the ability to insert a competitor's document into their spreadsheet, this creates a ton of data security issues. So not only would we need a standard for web 'documents' to become web 'objects' capable of being generically inserted into any other web document, we'll also need a system to maintain a certain level of security when it comes to this type of data sharing.

Possible? Certainly, but it isn't anything that will happen overnight.

What is Cloud Computing?

This brings us back to the initial question. What is cloud computing? It is the process of taking the services and tasks performed by our computers and bringing them to the web.

What does this mean to us?

With the "cloud" doing most of the work, this frees us up to access the "cloud" however we choose. It could be a super-charged desktop PC designed for high-end gaming, or a "thin client" laptop running the Linux operating system with an 8 gig flash drive instead of a conventional hard drive, or even an iPhone or a Blackberry.

We can also get at the same information and perform the same tasks whether we are at work, at home, or even a friend's house. Not that you would want to take a break between rounds of Texas Hold'em to do some work for the office -- but the prospect of being able to do it is pretty cool.

The Cloud as Competitive Advantage

I recently read that in 2014, the cloud budget may reach 30% of the overall IT budget at many corporations. Admittedly, I couldn’t find the actual report this figure was cited in, although Wikipedia does reference it within its page on cloud computing (see references below). However, this statement does make me ask, could the difference in your cloud investment make or break your ability to compete in the years ahead? 

For instance, Mark Hurd recently stated that Oracle’s software-as-a-service offerings alone generate in excess of $1B per year (and this figure is growing), and this only accounts for a portion of Oracle’s cloud-based software sales (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/23/mark-hurd-oracle-open-world). 

In fact, Oracle’s software makes up a large portion of Salesforce.com’s cloud platform, which today generates over $3B per year in revenue.

But the value of the cloud goes beyond just deploying software to the Internet. Your cloud platform needs to provide business value and agility to enable you to compete more effectively. And as other companies move to the cloud to gain an advantage, you need to build a cloud strategy with greater value than your competitors. This is where the open hybrid cloud enters the picture.

The open cloud is more than one built on standards or open-source software. Both are excellent starts in this effort, but an open cloud comes with a community of competent developers, and governance in terms of the future direction of the technology. This includes standardized protocols for interoperability, consistent APIs for cloud-based software, and ample abstraction to avoid vendor lock-in both in terms of software and cloud infrastructure.

 

How Cloud Computing Works

Let's say you're an executive at a large corporation. Your particular responsibilities include making sure that all of your employees have the right hardware and software they need to do their jobs. Buying computers for everyone isn't enough -- you also have to purchase software or software licenses to give employees the tools they require. Whenever you have a new hire, you have to buy more software or make sure your current software license allows another user. It's so stressful that you find it difficult to go to sleep on your huge pile of money every night.

Soon, there may be an alternative for executives like you. Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs. It's called cloud computing, and it could change the entire computer industry.

In a cloud computing system, there's a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of the rest.

There's a good chance you've already used some form of cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud computing. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you log in to a Web e-mail account remotely. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the service's computer cloud.

The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios, to deliver personalized information, to provide data storage or to power large, immersive computer games.

To do this, cloud computing uses networks of large groups of servers typically running low-cost consumer PC technology with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. This shared IT infrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together. Often, virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing.

Cloud Computing Standards

The standards for connecting the computer systems and the software needed to make cloud computing work are not fully defined at present time, leaving many companies to define their own cloud computing technologies.  Cloud computing systems offered by companies, like IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies for example, are based on open standards and open source software which link together computers that are used to to deliver Web 2.0 capabilities like mash-ups or mobile commerce.

Cloud Computing in the Data Center and for Small Business

Cloud computing has started to obtain mass appeal in corporate data centers as it enables the data center to operate like the Internet through the process of  enabling computing resources to be accessed and shared as virtual resources in a secure and scalable manner.

For a small and medium size business (SMB), the benefits of cloud computing is currently driving adoption. In the SMB sector there is often a lack of time and financial resources to purchase, deploy and maintain an infrastructure (e.g. the software, server and storage).

In cloud computing, small businesses can access these resources and expand or shrink services as business needs change. The common pay-as-you-go subscription model is designed to let SMBs easily add or remove services and you typically will only pay for what you do use.

Skills Needed for Cloud Computing

1. Business and financial skills

The intersection of business and technology is always an overarching concern, but it is especially so when it comes to cloud-based computing.

2. Technical skills

With the cloud, organizations can streamline their IT resources, offloading much of day-to-day systems and application management. But that doesn’t mean IT abdicates all responsibility. There’s a need for language skills to build applications that can run quickly on the Internet.

3. Enterprise architecture and business needs analysis

Cloud computing requires that IT pros cross disciplines, especially where service-oriented architecture comes into play.

4. Project management skills

Organizations must not let the flexibility of the cloud lead to missed deadlines or amorphous goals. That could negate the cloud cost advantage.

5. Contract and vendor negotiation skills

To deal with service-level agreements—and the problems involved when those SLAs are breached—IT pros need experience with contract and vendor negotiations.

6. Security and compliance

IT professionals dealing with the cloud must have a firm grasp of security protocols and the regulatory mandates related to their industries, both within and without the United States.

7. Data integration and analysis skills

IT pros may not be data scientists, but to take advantage of big data, they do need to help data scientists hook up big data, internal ERP, data warehouse and other data systems, and work with the business side to make effective use of big data.

8. Mobile app development and management

Organizations need to think about what kind of mobile experience they are offering to customers via the cloud and how they would like to improve that down the line.

As enterprise cloud computing evolves, it is important to add two more skills to the list:

9. Knowledge of open hybrid clouds

IT is not homogeneous, and neither should your cloud computing model be. IT pros need to understand how to build and extend their companies’ cloud computing infrastructure in a way 

that is open.

                                 
10. Understanding of OpenStack

In order to build the kind of flexible, secure, interoperable cloud infrastructure mentioned above, IT pros must have a strong understanding of the technology required to make it so. Open Stack is a key component. OpenStack, a collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists, comprises a series of projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

What other skills do IT professionals need to have in order to enable their organizations to successfully tap into the benefits of cloud computing? Are there any IT skills that the cloud is making obsolete? We welcome your insight in the comments section.

Cloud Computing Pros and Cons

Service providers are responsible for installing and maintaining core technology within the cloud. Some customers prefer this model because it limits their own manageability burden. However, customers cannot directly control system stability in this model and are highly dependent on the provider instead.

Cloud computing systems are normally designed to closely track all system resources, which enables providers to charge customers according to the resources each consumes. Some customers will prefer this so-called metered billing approach to save money, while others will prefer a flat-rate subscription to ensure predictable monthly or yearly costs.

Using a cloud computing environment generally requires you to send data over the Internet and store it on a third-party system. The privacy and security risks associated with this model must be weighed against alternatives.