Cloud computing definition

The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. Here I’m trying to explain a bit more about cloud computing. If you are new to cloud computing, you may please ready my basic cloud computing overview first.

Cloud Computing tags

Definition of Cloud Computing as per US Federal

Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models. Other leading cloud models like Salesforce cloud computing have different characteristics and attributes that may vary.

Five key characteristics

On-demand self-service – A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Ubiquitous network access – This is the best part I like the cloud. You have access to your data through different devices. You don’t have to carry even your laptop when you have access via mobile device. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Location independent resource pooling – This is raised as a security issue by most big corporate. You really don’t know where your data is. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity – One of the best advantage of cloud computing for fast growing fast and medium business. You can expand your capacities as per your requirement with no time. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Pay per use – Many of big companies suffer from the so called financial crisis and lie offs been daily news.The companies having big infrastructure affected more than small business. The reason is, even though the production become less this time, the running coast didn’t lower accordingly. But in Cloud computing, you need to pay as per your usage of resources. So, when you are having low production requirements, your resource usage also will be less which will lead to low running coast. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimization of resource use. Examples are measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organization accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.

Delivery Models

There are mainly three types of delivery models. Most common delivery model is Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) which is simple, yet powerful and widely available already. Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) is growing rapidly and open source platform are already providing PaaS for you.

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) – The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure and accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. Independent Gmail, Google Docs etc are widely used SaaS.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) – The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider (e.g., java, python, .Net). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but the consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

A week ago, I came across open source cloud platform, EyeOS. You can have a look over it on cloud.htmlremix.com . You can develop your own application for this cloud os. Open source developers are having a good future on this product service.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – The capability provided to the consumer is to rent processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g., firewalls, load balancers).

Deployment Models

Private cloud – The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization. Most of Medium to Big companies are already using this as for full or partial production management. Microsoft Exchange is a common example for communication cloud.

Community cloud – The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).

Public cloud – The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group. Most of the cloud service providers are coming under this model where they provide cloud as their product or service as cloud hosting services.

Hybrid cloud – The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).

Inspired by Kevin