Cloud computing the Choice of Platform for a Pilot Study - Essay Example

Cloud computing – the choice of platform for a pilot study. Summary The recent trends in Information Technology and the fast growing internet facilities have attracted the business enterprises towards innovations. With innovation as the highest priority enterprises have started seeking new methods and sources to cut down their computing expenses. New virtual technologies have paved the way for this method of demand based business. The companies thrive to reduce the costs of administration , computing and infrastructure. This has led to the option of cloud computing. Cloud computing actually encompasses both a platform and an application. It could be described as the platform for the future generation that provides availability of a large number of virtual resources, dynamic allocation of these available resources, data storage facilities, servers hosting web applications. These attractive and flexible facilities can be well utilized by enterprises which need to achieve more efficiency with less investment. Practically there are many cloud computing services including Software As A Service ( SAAS ) , Hardware As A Service (HAAS ) and Platform As A Service (PAAS ) . This report discusses about the trends in cloud computing and specifically about cloud platforms. The commercially available cloud platforms are analyzed. Special attention have been given to the cloud platforms of Microsoft and Google and a suitable cloud platform has been proposed for the pilot study. Cloud computing – the choice of platform for a pilot study. Introduction : This report focuses on the implementation of a pilot cloud computing platform facility in one of the departments of the ACME. Based on the recent meeting and debate over the audit, this pilot has been planned to be run to improve the efficiency of the business. This necessitates the need for an in depth discussion about the various cloud computing provisions. Initially the report discusses about the core concepts of cloud computing and then a discussion about cloud platform enables to visualize the importance in opting for a cloud computing platform. Later the commercially available cloud computing facilities are dealt with special focus on Microsoft and Google. Finally a proposal has been given to adopt suitable platforms for the pilot innovation. Need for Cloud Computing : Cloud computing refers to the method of providing IT services through the internet. Traditionally all hardware and software related capabilities had been installed in company’s servers , hard drives of personal computers, etc. This method of owning the required hardware and software had limited flexibility. When it comes to a way of increasing the capacity of storage or adding new capabilities, one has to investment more and again in terms of buying new software, infrastructure facilities, training requirements, etc. A feasible solution to this problem has been given by the cloud computing architecture. John. B. ( 2008 ) states that around 69% of internet users in America use online data storage facilities, services of webmail and applications related to word processing whose functionality is under the controlled by web service providers. The norms for usage may be pay and use or even subscription based use. This provides good flexibility in terms of storage, data and application accessibility. Thus not only technical professionals but small to medium businesses have also started thinking about deploying the cloud computing facility to improve their business efficiency and performance. Cloud computing : The phenomenon of accessing the data and applications residing in the cyberspace through any web enabled device is called as cloud computing. It acquires the name of cloud computing from the cloud symbols used for the internet in computer networks. Cloud computing encompasses a platform and an application says Greg et al ( 2007 ). While the cloud computing platforms are involved in dynamically configuring the server facilities, the cloud computing applications are concerned with servers that are hosting web services and web applications. Cloud computing manages various workloads which includes back- end , front – end , interactive jobs. The workloads are deployed quickly among the available machines in the cloud which is a group of computers. These machines may be physical or virtual. Also the resource allocation can be monitored and rebalanced in real time. Thus it can be understood that Cloud computing also supports grid computing. Generally , cloud computing can be confused with grid computing, but both are different in the sense that grid computing fragments a larger task into smaller tasks so that they are executed in parallel. Whereas cloud computing distributes the various tasks to various servers. Cloud computing also supports Web 2.0 applications. Usage and benefits of cloud computing : In a business enterprise, cloud computing can have varied usage in areas like e – business, social networking , new innovations , internal pilots , etc. Internal innovation begin with a request for online resources to any cloud service provider with the help of a web enabled device. A resource administrator in the cloud accepts the request and allocates the servers. The cloud may even reject the request. Once approved, the innovators are provided with the resources within a short duration itself. The cloud usage with respect to e – business of an enterprise is concerned with scalability and prioritization. Scalability refers to the allocation of more servers by the cloud to enhance the increasing demand in the usage. For example demand or workload in a business may increase due to shopping during weekends or in the evenings or during festive seasons compared to other timings. Allocating a large cloud during this time slot increases the efficiency of the business. Prioritization in e – business refers to providing more resources for applications that are involved in rigorous computing. Generally revenue generating applications are given more priority and hence more resources than applications involved in research and innovations. Another usage of cloud computing is the virtual world environment. Commercial virtual worlds may have millions of registered users. The login rate of these users need to be monitored in real time and their applications have to be served without any time delay. This necessitates the real time re - allocation of resources which is provided by the cloud. Finally cloud computing finds use by even individuals who are innovative and request for resources to accomplish their innovations with less personal investment. Thus the major benefits of cloud computing are, the enterprises achieve efficiency in terms of hardware or software investments. They also get the benefit of employing a virtual automated resource management system and improved IT services . Types of cloud computing : Daniel. M. ( 2008 ) says that there are three types of cloud computing as explained below. The first is Software As A Service ( SAAS ) which is a business level cloud service meant for on demand applications and information. In SAAS the application runs on the servers in the cloud. The on premises user has no control over the run time environment. A prominent example for SAAS application is Salesforce.com. The second type constitutes the Hardware As A Service ( HAAS ) which are also referred to as Elastic Compute Clouds ( EC2 ). These Elastic clouds enable the availability of virtual hardware on elastic or flexible basis. The on premises infrastructure may provide some basic facilities. To have an enhanced application specific hardware requirement, the cloud services can be opted for. The third type described by Daniel is the Platform As A Service ( PAAS ) which deals with the authoring of applications and providing run time facilities. Generally the users of cloud platforms are developers rather than ordinary users. These three types of services can be visualized as in fig.1. Fig. 1. Types of cloud computing services. Cloud Computing Platforms : Any application developer relies on a platform which essentially has three parts namely cloud foundation, cloud infrastructure services and cloud application services says David .C. (2008). These essentials of a platform are expected to be provided by the cloud’s platform services. The interlinking between the on premises platform and cloud platform can be viewed as in fig.2. Though cloud platforms and on premises platform seem to be similar, they are not identical. The applications run under on premises environment are of the enterprise scale while the applications run on the cloud are of higher scale handling many internet users in parallel. This need for very high scalability allows the cloud to operate the same functions in a different manner. Fig.2. Interaction between Cloud Platforms and On premises Platforms. The cloud foundation is meant to provide with the operating system and local functions support. The operating system support of the cloud foundation provides a group of interfaces to the user for any application. A good example of an operating system available in the cloud can be the Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud ( EC2 ). This EC2 supports specialized Linux instances that run in virtual machines. Thus Elastic Compute Cloud can be viewed as a platform rather than as an operating system. The user of such platforms can freely create many instances and spread huge workloads using them. The local support available in the cloud is expected to facilitate the mixed usage of any application with any operating system. Practically the local support provided by cloud can hide it’s operating system. Due to scalability, the cloud provider generally optimizes the local support for any application. The basic infrastructure that can be provided by the cloud include distributed remote storage, integration services, identity of the users, etc. These infrastructure facilities provide service for varied applications. The application services of the cloud may include service to specific applications. Some of the application services in the cloud are SAAS whose services are accessible by both on premises applications and other application in the cloud. Apart from the SAAS services, other services like the search options provided by search engines can also be encompassed under the cloud environment. The cloud application services may also include the mapping facility. Many application developers user maps of places, tourists spots, hotels, etc. the mapping services by Google and Microsoft can also be considered as a part of the cloud services. Microsoft’s Cloud Platform provisions : Microsoft has launched it’s cloud platform Azure. It provides an operating system and other services for developers. It is a highly flexible platform that gives interoperability between cloud and on premises applications. The developers can create the applications in the clouds with the help of Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the .NET framework. It also supports other tools like PHP, Python, Ruby. It supports multiple internet protocols. The business oriented services are Microsoft Exchange online and SharePoint Online. The major facilities under the Azure platform are Live services, Microsoft .NET services, Microsoft SQL services, Microsoft SharePoint services, Microsoft Dynamics CRM services. The services offered to an Enterprise include, Microsoft Exchange services which supports spam filtering, Microsoft Dynamics CRM product which has a platform for business applications, database services through SQL services, Microsoft SharePoint document library that gives a remote structured storage facility. The Microsoft BizTalk server enables the integration of applications that belongs to an organization. Microsoft also gives local support in the form of CRM Live services. This dynamics CRM platform is concerned with business applications that are data – oriented. Microsoft Live ID supports identity and authentication of the user. Microsoft Live Search enables search operations from both on premises and cloud applications. Also the Virtual Earth for mapping, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Contacts add up as other application services that are provide by Microsoft . The other cloud based facility offered by Microsoft is the Live Mesh which enables to link all the computers of a person so that they can be used remotely. These machines may be at different places. Each computer appears as a mesh folder and the storage capacity is 5 GB in the cloud. Google’s Cloud Platform provisions : Google being a giant in the internet scenario, has recently launched it’s Google App Engine. It is a developer tool that can be used to run web applications on Google’s servers. Competing with Amazon’s S3 , EC2 and simpleDB, Google’s App Engine bundles all it’s end – to – end services into a single package. The recent upgraded version of Google’s App Engine came out in early 2008, allowing 5GB of storage, 200M mega CPU cycles each day, bandwidth of about 10 GB each day says Richard.M. ( 2008). The facility of Google Big Table enables storage of data in the Google File System. The APIs provided by this engine eases emailing and URL fetching. Also the user identity and authenticating mechanism is simplified by the utilities provided by Google App Engine as each user is already authenticated by the Google account they have with Google. This platform also gives local support to run Python Web applications. It also includes a structured data storage for it’s query language. The search mechanism provided by Google search also becomes a part of the Google App Engine platform, which is an added advantage. Also the mapping services of Google Earth can be utilized as a cloud service. Apart from these Google’s Picasa – the photo sharing site and the Google Contacts – the online contacts site are some of the other added application services provided by this Google platform. For data storage this platform uses the Google Calendar which provides many options to the user for the safe and secured storage and easy retrieval of their information. Comparison and proposal : Based on the above discussion it is seen that Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform provides facilities that are basic in all cloud platform services and also specific services related to enterprise management. At the same time Google’s App Engine provides services more related to developers and innovators. Thus the proposal made by this report is that , for an administrative department the Microsoft Azure could be a better choice. For other research and development departments Google’s App Engine would suffice. In all the pilots care must be taken for secured data and application transaction between the on premises platform and the cloud platform. The security options offered by any platform must be carefully chosen to maintain trust, reliability and confidence with the cloud service provider. Conclusion : In the above report details about cloud computing services has been dealt. More emphasis has been made on cloud platforms provided by Google and Microsoft. A comparison between the two platforms proposes that Microsoft’s Azure could be suitable for administrative purposes and Google’s App Engine could serve developmental applications. References : John .B. Horrigan , September 2008, Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services , Data Memo, Pew Internet and American Life Project. Greg. B. , Padma. M. , Dennis.Q. , Linda. L., Harold. H., October 2007, Cloud Computing, for High Performance On Demand Solutions ( HiPODS ) , version 1, copyright IBM Corporation . Daniel. M . , November 2008 , Overview of Cloud Computing Technology and Market Trends, Infrastructure Alliances – Green IT for vmware. David .C. , August 2008 , A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms , An Enterprise – Oriented View , sponsored by Microsoft Corporation, copyright Chappel & Associates. Richard MacManus, 2008 , Google App Engine : Cloud Control, < http/www.appengine.google.com > Read More