Cloud computing

During the previous two lessons, many topics were covered but a word being mentioned caught my attention - Cloud Computing. It is a hot topic in technology nowadays, where the name 'Cloud computing' was inspired by the cloud symbol which is often adopted in flowcharts and diagrams to represent the Internet. In general, it is about the delivery of computing resources over the Internet providing the ability for users to access the pool of the resources, which are normally owned and maintained by a third party.



                                                                                 From www.alchemysys.net

From the photo above, we can see that cloud computing allow different devices to access storages, hardware, network and services on their requests and is regardless of their locations. This acts as a factor of the rapidly expanding mobile market because using mobile phones and tablets can perform almost everything that we required to use PC to do so previously. For instant, by using the 'ePrint' service of HP, users are able to print their documents by their mobile phone remotely.



                                                                                     ePrint service of HP printers

Before going further to talk about the pros and cons of cloud computing, three common delivery models of cloud computing will be introduced:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

It is the most basic service model to provide virtual infrastructure and storage as well as hardware assets. This allows companies to only pay for the capacities they require and offers a leverage of possible additional storage space in data centres and servers. Amazon Web services is one of the largest IaaS providers.

2. Platform as a service (PaaS)

In this model, providers offer computing platforms with virtual machines, operating systems, application services and frameworks on their infrastructures. Users may make use of the cloud platform of the providers to develop applications and software solutions without the necessity of the managing and allocating the required hardware and software if they do it on their own.

3. Software as a service (SaaS)

SaaS is a operating environment with user interface, applications and management. Users enjoy services including emails, inventory control, database processing and suchlike through cloud clients offered by providers. Services are available everywhere since service providers would host the applications and manage the data so the need of installing the applications along with the corresponding maintenance and support on the computers of users is elinminated. Google Docs, a famous service which I believe you have used it, is a typical example of SaaS.

                                                IaaS is the basic model at the bottom. PaaS would extract some

                                                of its details, while SaaS would extract some of the details of

                                                both PaaS and IaaS.

 

Cloud computing, as a new concept, brings loads of benefits to us. One of them would be the accessibility of data and softwares. We may access our information store in the cloud at any place in the world provided that Internet access can be obtained. We no longer need to worry about forgetting to bring a USB which stores the information of the meeting tomorrow. At the same time, the danger of potential leakage of customer data due to loss of USB storages, which we can frequently hear from news, can be completed eliminated.

 

On the other hand, in business point of view, cloud computing could reduce operational costs enormously. Currently companies are required to pay for every software license installed in their computers usually with annual subscription fee. With cloud computing, applications would be in the cloud and requires employees to login. Softwares can be subscribed on a needed basis, which would lead to lower cost of using them. Moreover, as servers of cloud computing are not in-house anymore, the operational cost of companies can be further reduced.

 

Although using cloud computing technology is cost effective for enterprises, there are some shortcomings along that cannot be overlooked. Network availability would be one of them. As everything are stored in the cloud for cloud computing, once the network is down because of any reasons, we would not be able to access to the data and applications. It would be disastrous for banks and other companies which provide 7x24 services since the loss would be massive.

 

Another disadvantage would be the privacy and security concern. As in cloud computing, data and applications would be stored in third-party servers. They are out of our control and we can only rely on their protection measures against viruses and hackings. It would induce a sense of insecurity if you store important things such as credit card information, bank statements and so on. It is not rare as recently there is news about leakage of customer information including credit card data of Sony

 

Cloud computing would concededly be a trend of Computer technology for many years. With the rapid advancement of the technique, I believe cloud computing service will become more stable and reliable in the near future, where the disadvantages of it can be minimized. By that time, we can enjoy the benefits of it without worrying of the security and availablility of the service anymore!

 

References:
[1] Wikipedia, Cloud Computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_a_service#Service_models

[2] Cloud Computing
http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing