Cloud Computing Introduction, Types and Solutions

Introduction:

Cloud computing is an internet based computing which relies on sharing different computing resources in place of having personal devices or local network to handle software applications. It is similar to grid computing in which unused processing cycle of all computers in the same network are harnesses to provide solutions too intensive for any single computer. In cloud computing a wide range of services such as storage, servers and software applications are transferred to an organizations devices and computers via internet. Cloud computing uses the networks of server typically running low-cost consumer personal computer technology with specialized connections to transfer data processing chores across them. Virtualization is used to increase the power of cloud computing. The cloud computing services are divided into three categories: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Software as a service (SaaS) and Platform as a service (PaaS). Below we will discuss about all these services in detail.

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Infrastructure as a Service, abbreviated as IaaS, which is a service that contains the basic building blocks for cloud computing and provide access to computers, networking features and data storage space. It offers a high level of flexibility and control over IT resources and almost similar to existing and familiar IT resources. Some IaaS providers are:

Software as a Service, abbreviated as SaaS provides a complete cloud product that is run and managed by the service provider itself. It is also referred as end-user software applications. One needs not to worry about how the inside architecture is managed or the service is maintained. You only need to think about how you will be going to use that particular software module. An example of SaaS service is web based email system in which you can easily send and receive emails without maintaining email product, servers and OS that the email system is running on. The popular SaaS service providers include:

Platform as a service, abbreviated as PaaS help organizations to manage the inside infrastructure and allow you to concentrate on management and deployment of your software applications. It will help to increase productivity as you need not to worry about capacity planning, patching, application maintenance, resource procurement or any other undifferentiated heavy lifting involved in processing your software application. The PaaS service providers are:

Desktop as a service is abbreviated as DaaS, which is a cloud service where the back end of a virtual desktop is hosted by a DaaS service provider. Example of DaaS service providers are:

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What is Cloud Computing?

Aliyun, the cloud computing unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is taking another major step toward international expansion with the opening of a data center in Singapore. Aliyun received a $1 billion investmentearmarked for global expansion from its parent company last month.

The Singapore data center is the third one launched outside of mainland China by Aliyun (the other two are in Hong Kong and Santa Clara, California) and will serve as its international headquarters once it opens in September. The company now has seven data centers in total. Aliyun, which currently claims 1.8 million customers, also plans to target the Middle East, Japan, and Europe.

Cloud computing is a promising segment for Alibaba as it seeks to diversify beyond its core e-commerce business. In its second-quarter earnings report last week, Alibaba reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth in three years, but said it was beginning to see the positive impact of years of investment in Aliyuns technology, as its quarterly revenue from cloud-computing and Internet infrastructure jumped 106 percent year-over-year to $78 million.

Aliyun has to shoulder the burden, however, of being a relatively late entrant to the cloud computing business and faces competition from established players like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud, and Google Cloud. To differentiate, Aliyun has focused on serving Chinese companies who need servers in other countries, as well as emerging markets with growth potential.

For example, the IT market in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand is expected to reach $52 billion this year, with annual growth of six percent, according to Gartner research.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Gartner expects the public cloud services market to grow 17.1 percent this year to $851 million, up from $727 million last year. Aliyun has already signed a joint venture agreement with Dubai-based holding company Meraas to serve companies and government agencies in MENA, where it also plans to build a data center.

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Alibabas Cloud Computing Business Will Open Its ...

Cloud computing forces you to wrestle with three key strategic, operational and people challenges:

Cloud computing enables speed, agility and innovation. You need to move from the drawing board to deployment. Is your organization ready to adapt?

You need to choose a cloud computing environment that's right for your organization. Should you consider private cloud, public cloud or a hybrid cloud solution? Which vendors play in this space? Will they be in business 12 months from now?

If someone else is running your computers and software, you need strategies to stay secure. Your security policy depends on how many pieces you control the more you own, the more you control. Are you ready to extend your enterprise security policy to the cloud?

You need a clear vision and effective processes, skills and organizational structure to drive cloud innovation in your enterprise. What cloud adoption strategies should you consider? What does your road map look like?

How will you create a compelling cloud vision? What strategies will better align business and IT? How should you measure business value? Is cloud technology selection really the easiest part?

How will you deliver value to the business? Which functions will you move to the cloud? What use cases will drive the most impact? How will you fund cloud computing? What are the spending and staffing risks? Should you continue to maintain an on-premises staff?

What cultural changes does your organization need to make? What political hurdles must you clear to get buy-in from your security department and other key stakeholders? Have you considered cloud requirements and needs for all stakeholders?

More and more organizations are moving services, storage, email, collaboration and applications to the cloud. You need to decide whether to choose to support private, public or a hybrid cloud mix. What's the right mix of infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and application (SaaS) environments for your organization? Where are the cost savings?

Which services require the most agility and speed? What's the right balance of standard service offerings that will drive the most business value? Do you need to build an internal shared-service center? How does a private cloud implementation impact your data center architecture?

Which applications are most likely to move to public cloud delivery models? Will your organization bypass your IT department and get its applications from the cloud via software-as-service (SaaS) for a monthly pay-per-user-per-month subscription pricing model?

Is hybrid cloud really the future? What level of flexibility do you need to customize, manage and monitor your applications? How will the cloud services brokerage role define future IT organizations?

You need to break through the resistance and increase confidence that cloud is safe. You need to keep your data safe from prying eyes. You need your security team to buy in to your cloud initiatives. That's a tall order.

More than 50% of all data workloads are virtualized. How will you use virtualization to innovate? How can workloads be secured when consuming cloud-based infrastructure as a service? Are you ready to run your physical appliances as virtual appliances?

How will you protect your data in the cloud? What's the right level of recovery and manageability in your organization? What security controls should you inject? Who will have access? Should you use data tokenization? How will you migrate your data?

Which security vendors will get it right first? Which will guarantee delivery? What if the cloud fails? Where are the standards? What level of transparency do you need?

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Cloud Computing - 2015 Trends, Topics & Research

Cloud computing,Jos Vasconcelos Library: computer terminalsAPmethod of running application software and storing related data in central computer systems and providing customers or other users access to them through the Internet.

The origin of the expression cloud computing is obscure, but it appears to derive from the practice of using drawings of stylized clouds to denote networks in diagrams of computing and communications systems. The term came into popular use in 2008, though the practice of providing remote access to computing functions through networks dates back to the mainframe time-sharing systems of the 1960s and 1970s. In his 1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility, the Canadian electrical engineer Douglas F. Parkhill predicted that the computer industry would come to resemble a public utility in which many remotely located users are connected via communication links to a central computing facility.

For decades, efforts to create large-scale computer utilities were frustrated by constraints on the capacity of telecommunications networks such as the telephone system. It was cheaper and easier for companies and other organizations to store data and run applications on private computing systems maintained within their own facilities.

The constraints on network capacity began to be removed in the 1990s when telecommunications companies invested in high-capacity fibre-optic networks in response to the rapidly growing use of the Internet as a shared network for exchanging information. In the late 1990s, a number of companies, called application service providers (ASPs), were founded to supply computer applications to companies over the Internet. Most of the early ASPs failed, but their model of supplying applications remotely became popular a decade later, when it was renamed cloud computing.

Cloud computing encompasses a number of different services. One set of services, sometimes called software as a service (SaaS), involves the supply of a discrete application to outside users. The application can be geared either to business users (such as an accounting application) or to consumers (such as an application for storing and sharing personal photographs). Another set of services, variously called utility computing, grid computing, and hardware as a service (HaaS), involves the provision of computer processing and data storage to outside users, who are able to run their own applications and store their own data on the remote system. A third set of services, sometimes called platform as a service (PaaS), involves the supply of remote computing capacity along with a set of software-development tools for use by outside software programmers.

Early pioneers of cloud computing include Salesforce.com, which supplies a popular business application for managing sales and marketing efforts; Google, Inc., which in addition to its search engine supplies an array of applications, known as Google Apps, to consumers and businesses; and Amazon Web Services, a division of online retailer Amazon.com, which offers access to its computing system to Web-site developers and other companies and individuals. Cloud computing also underpins popular social networks and other online media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Traditional software companies, including Microsoft Corporation, Apple Inc., Intuit Inc., and Oracle Corporation, have also introduced cloud applications.

Cloud-computing companies either charge users for their services, through subscriptions and usage fees, or provide free access to the services and charge companies for placing advertisements in the services. Because the profitability of cloud services tends to be much lower than the profitability of selling or licensing hardware components and software programs, it is viewed as a potential threat to the businesses of many traditional computing companies.

Construction of the large data centres that run cloud-computing services often requires investments of hundreds of millions of dollars. The centres typically contain thousands of server computers networked together into parallel-processing or grid-computing systems. The centres also often employ sophisticated virtualization technologies, which allow computer systems to be divided into many virtual machines that can be rented temporarily to customers. Because of their intensive use of electricity, the centres are often located near hydroelectric dams or other sources of cheap and plentiful electric power.

Because cloud computing involves the storage of often sensitive personal or commercial information in central database systems run by third parties, it raises concerns about data privacy and security as well as the transmission of data across national boundaries. It also stirs fears about the eventual creation of data monopolies or oligopolies. Some believe that cloud computing will, like other public utilities, come to be heavily regulated by governments.

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cloud computing | computer science | Britannica.com

Cloud Computing Services from Truewater allows you to take advantage of a powerful enterprise class networking infrastructure. Formerly this type of computing power was financially beyond the reach of small and medium sized companies. But today, Truewaters cloud computing gives you many advantages over traditional on-site servers.

It can be tempting to put off replacing aging hardware because of the expensive outlay of capital. In traditional computing, server and computer equipment upgrades can take a sizeable chunk out of cash flow. But with Truewaters cloud alternative, not only will you get far superior equipment; you can do it without the capital outlay. So now you dont need to put off server upgrades. When you delay replacing old servers, you increase the risk of server crashes.

Cloud computing can allow users to access data from home or on the road giving your staff greater mobility and productivity. During natural disasters, this mobility can keep your company functioning. Because you will be accessing data over the Internet, fast and redundant Internet connections streamline cloud computing. In the Houston market fast Internet access is usually readily available.

With traditional on-site servers, you must know what your computing requirements will be for the next three to five years. If you over estimate your growth, you end up spending too much, but if you under estimate, you end up with inadequate computing power. Scalability is one of the great advantages of cloud computing. As your staff grows or shrinks, you can add or decrease your computer usage.

Surprisingly we have found that electricity is not a constant in many Houston office buildings or business complexes. Server reboots and outages from power fluctuations and surges are common. Additionally, keeping server equipment at the ideal temperature can be challenging in office environments. These challenges disappear with cloud computing because your data will be located in highly secure first class data centers.

Truewater cloud computing services will give you higher availability and redundancy than you have ever experienced with traditional on-site network infrastructure. You wont need to spend additional money on IT support because all the IT services you need can be provided with your cloud computing.

Contact Truewater today to find out more about cloud computing services for your Houston company. (713) 869-0001 Ext. 5

We provide a range of Computer Support, Network Services and IT Consulting in Houston, Sugar Land, Pasadena, Baytown, Spring, Kingwood, The Woodlands, Pearland and Bellaire.

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Cloud Computing - Houston, Sugar Land, Pasadena | Truewater