Cloud computing explained - Mphasis

1. Cloud Computing Internet is the new oil and the source of millions of jobs to individuals, groups and organizations. It is far more than a source of job, as it captures all of life endeavors, be it entertainment, sport, education, lifestyle and all sort of things, in fact, internet is life. Internet has a lot of features that makes it thick, and one of the most important feature is the cloud computing. Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted service over the internet. These services are sharply divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IssaS), Platform-as- a –Service (PaaS) and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that’s often used to represent the internet in flowcharts and diagrams. Cloud service has three features that makes it very different from the traditional web hosting services. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or by the hour; it is elastic – a user can have as much or as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing, but a personal computer and an internet access). Cloud computing has garnered quite a lot of interest from the general public due to the significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed internet connectivity and a host of other packages that it possesses. The cloud packages are diverse and can either be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the internet. A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to limited number of people. Be that as it may, the general goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services. Cloud Computing Deployment Models Private cloud services are delivered from a business data center to internal users. This model offers the versatility and convenience of the cloud, while preserving the management, control and security common to local data centers. Internal centers may be billed or not through IT Chargeback. Common private cloud technologies and vendors include Amazon, VMware and OpenStack. The story is not the same with the public cloud, as a third-party cloud service provider delivers the cloud service over the internet. Public cloud services are sold on demand, typically by the minute or hour, though long-term commitments are available for many services. Customers are required to only pay the CPU cycles; storage or bandwidth they consume. A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud services and an on-premises private cloud, with orchestration and automation between the two. Companies can run mission – critical workloads or sensitive application on the private cloud and use the public cloud to handle workload bursts or spikes in demand. The goal of a hybrid cloud is to create a

2. unified, automated, scalable environment that takes advantage of all that a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining control over mission-critical data. Some consider cloud computing an overused buzzword that has been blown out of proportion by marketing departments at large software firms. A common argument from critics is that it cannot succeed because it means that organizations must lose control of their data, such as e-mail provider that stores data in multiple locations around the world. A large regulated company like a bank might be required to store data in the United States. While this is not an insurmountable issue, it demonstrates the type of issue that some companies may have with cloud computing. Its proponents point to it being a new paradigm in software development, where smaller organizations have access to processing power, storage and business processes that were once only available to large enterprises. Features and Benefits of Cloud Computing Cloud computing is embroiled with many features that makes it very attractive to business and end users. Some of the benefits are: • Self-service provision - End users can sign-up compute resources for almost any type of workload on demand. This eliminates the traditional need for IT administrators to provide and manage resources. Pay per use - Compute resources are measured at a granular level, enabling users to pay only the resources and workloads they use. Migration flexibility - Organization can move certain workloads to or from the cloud - or to different cloud platforms as desired or automatically for better costs savings or to use new services as they emerge. Elasticity - Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and scale down again as demand decreases. This helps to eliminate the need for massive investments in local infrastructure, which may not remain active. • • • With the way the way the way is moving. Especially in this age, which has been termed as the jet age, it is only normal for businesses to look towards the best internet services available, and cloud computing happens to be on top of the food chain.