Cloud Computing : Toward a Cloudy IT Infrastructure

In traditional network diagrams, the cloud always represented a fairly static

view of an intermediary virtual area on the Internet. It basically had no real

function other than passing data from one point to the other between servers on

the Internet and clients. Hosting companies would host servers on the Internet

where you could setup your applications to run.

The Cloud Computing model changes this slightly. Instead of providing just a

medium for messages to pass through between clients and servers, it tries to

provide a number of services within the Internet “cloud” itself. These services

can range from storage, computation, applications and even complete operating

systems — all available as a service on the Internet — which you can go ahead

and use directly. The “Software-as-a-Service” or SaaS concept is one of the

major driving forces of Cloud Computing along with other concepts such as Web

2.0, the Web browser and mobile applications.

Amazon



Amazon has a number of Cloud offerings. The Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
is an offering that allows users to request “virtual machines” in the cloud.

Once the request is met, the user can “provision” these virtual cloud servers to

run any software they want. This is completely dynamic in the sense that the

user has control over how many virtual instances he wants to provision and run

at a particular point in time. The servers can run anything from OpenSolaris,

Linux to Windows Server 2003.

Other services that Amazon has include S3 (Simple Storage Service) — a

service that lets users or applications use unlimited storage for their files

and SimpleDB - a distributed database system that can be used in conjunction

with S3 and EC2. All of these services are available through programming models

to enable end users the ability to use them in their own applications as well.

The traditional computing model over the internet	The Cloud Computing model where the service layer provides access to the services in the cloud.

Google



Google provides two different sets of services in the cloud computing world. The
first is the famous Google Apps — a combination of services that users can use

as part of their own domain to enable common functionality. The different parts

of the Google network — Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites and Docs — are combined

into a packaged offering that users can subscribe to in an enterprise. This

enables users to have their entire organization's data stored up in Google's

“cloud” and make it accessible almost anywhere.

The other service that Google offers is the Google App Engine. This is an

online application framework where users can host their own applications.

However, the Google App Engine only supports a limited version of Python as

their programming framework. It also has a database-like construct with an

SQL-like language to be able to use to program applications.

Microsoft



One of the biggest criticisms of the Cloud Computing model is about offline
availability of data. For instance, what happens when the Internet connection is

down, you're travelling in a plane or the service itself is down for some

reason? Do you have access to your data at that time — in traditional SaaS

models, you do not. This is where Microsoft pitches the “Software + Services”

model over the “Software as a Service” model. According to Microsoft, services

in the cloud must be rich but also be able to sync with a software in the user's

enterprise (desktop/network) seamlessly to provide an offline experience as

well. Microsoft — although a slightly late entrant — have probably the largest

set of offerings in the Cloud Computing space and are heavily invested into it

for the future as well.

Windows Live:



This is a set of services offer consumer centric services — such as blogs, photo
galleries, online storage, messaging, mail, calendars and more. End users also

get a bunch of tools that allow them to work with these services offline. For

instance, to write and manage your Blog, you can use Live Writer. To work with

images and upload them, the Live Photo Gallery is a Windows application that

lets you process the images on your machine.

Microsoft Online Services:



Also called the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), this set targets
enterprise customers with hosted Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications

Server, Live Meeting and Dynamics CRM. Enterprises can subscribe to these

services and users can use them in both online and offline modes. No more

worrying about being unable to access a mail, a CRM contact details or an

important document when offline.

Windows Azure, SSDS and Live Mesh:



Microsoft recently announced the availability of a new set of services under the
name of Windows Azure. This is for almost all practical purposes a online

version of Windows that allows developers to use the hosted Windows platform to

create and host their own applications. The SQL Server Data Services (SSDS)

provides well knows SQL Server 2008 based database storage engines and Live Mesh

allows for data and application synchronization between desktops and even mobile

devices.

The future



There are many other companies in this playing field as well — IBM, HP,
SalesForce — to name just a few, who are heavily investing in this model of

computing. Since Cloud computing reduces the infrastructure requirements and

budgets that an enterprise needs to host their applications or data, this model

seems to be getting more popular. One doesn't need to worry about purchasing and

provisioning hardware and software, integrating it into the network and other

headaches. Simply request the service or upgrade you want and it gets done for

you transparently. Cloud computing can help you cut or at least manage your

infrastructure costs better and allow availability of your application and data

over the Internet. However, one must be able to ensure that data is available

anytime one needs it and having a good software and a seamless connectivity to

the service is essential in this regard.