What is your Perception of Cloud Computing?

This document is not to propose the definition of CLOUD COMPUTING, rather an open forum where we can put our idea of what we think cloud computing is?

Of all the blogs and web posting I have been through, I always learnt different aspect of cloud services.

Every customer I have met has its own idea of Cloud, all the proposals I have referred created by experienced Solution Architect s have a different aspect of cloud computing which is as per their product portfolio and every cloud service provider has their own architecture.

But I could never find a complete product list or components that make CLOUD COMPUTING as a complete service. It always changes with resepect to customer and Cloud Service providers. Different scenarios comes with different images of cloud services.

As per me, the concept of Cloud is another revolution in IT which is still evolving and very immature. All the definitions seem right because a service can include no. of components and it would depend what service provider you are talking to and what kind of services he has made public to offer like IaaS (Infrastructure, Network, Security ), PaaS, SaaS, Network, Security etc.

In Sept 2011, an Aberdeen Group study found that disciplined companies achieved on average 68% increase in their IT expense because cloud computing and only a 10% reduction in data center power costs.

The misbelief of just virtualizing the servers does not content to Cloud which people call it as Private Cloud. To me a cloud is a service where any component from the end user connection till data you are trying to access resides either public or private but on a shared platform.

We have tons of Public cloud providers (AWS, SAVVIS VPDC etc) in the market which have ginormous product portfolio to cater to the customer requirement of having either Application, Middleware, Database, Infrastructure, Network or Security components on a shared platform which could be public or private.

Yes, Private shared platform because that is not made public but is shared within set of customers, typically what you get from Managed Hosting service providers like SAVVIS, Terremark, Rackspace etc.

This amazing concept of Cloud Computing is a great way to reduce on the IT expenses which does not mean only Infrastructure but Power, Cooling, Space, manpower etc.

The biggest facility Cloud Computing provides in wide range of type of services like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Network, security etc. One of the major benefits of cloud computing is that there is no limitation of place and medium. We can reach our applications and data anywhere in the world, on any system.

These services are easily available globally and Organizations need to worry on investing on building datacenters, huge cost to the Network and Security gear, build up in-house IT team for management of the H/W and Softwares, pain of managing the vendors for software licenses, facility management and many more things. The customer just pays for what he uses as these services are available on hourly billing – ‘Pay as You Go’.

The scalability of these cloud services is the most attractive prospects in the revolutionary phenomenon. It provides a useful safety net for when your needs and demands alter. Cloud computing offers organizations the means to scale (increasing or decreasing) their computing resources whenever the Business need be. So if it’s not a peak time for your business, you can reduce the computing resources with minimal requirement and lower the TCV for your Org. It’s the smarter idea to make your bosses happy, but it’s not cost cutting rather a smart way of cutting on resources that you don’t need. The companies often do cost cutting by laying off the employees due less business but that was not possible for the Infrastructure that they have invested for the business – it’s all possible now.

This ability to alter your plans due to fluctuation in business size and needs is a superb benefit of cloud computing especially when experiencing a sudden growth in demand.

The offerings like IaaS on Cloud let Organizations not invest on heavy machines to run applications. If data security is the concern then it could be a Hybrid option – run Applications on Public cloud and DBs on the dedicated servers which is a huge cost drop.

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.

The Platform-as-a-service offering in the cloud is defined as a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider's infrastructure. Developers create applications on the provider's platform over the Internet. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer's computer.

The Public Cloud offerings like SaaS allow end users to access the business applications without installation and access their personal files. SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.

Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: "application" "storage" and "connectivity." Each segment serves a different purpose and offers different products for businesses and individuals around the world.

I would appreciate if you can put in your thoughts about Cloud Computing. It’s still evolving and getting it to understand from different perspectives would be really great. Atleast it will help the solution guys to pitch in different solutions to their customer and win some good business for their Orgs.