Many business executives are probably wondering why their It staff has such a sudden interest in the weather. On a sunny afternoon, they're equally perplexed by all the references to clouds. In this perspective, we'll help you decipher what they're talking about, why you should care, and how you should proceed.
What is the Cloud?
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First the "Cloud" is not a thing; it's a formula of delivering It computing services. There is no new gadget called the "Cloud". But, a cloud delivered explication does have a bodily presence; it sits on hardware and runs software just like the servers sitting in your data town today. The divergence is how it's done as much as where it's done.
Cloud computing relies on the virtualization of servers (taking a bodily server and subdividing it into a whole of virtual servers which each control independently on the same bodily device), storehouse virtualization through San's (storage area networks), and networking (internet, Vpn, Lan, Wan). These technologies are combined and engineered to then supply a explication that provides the touch of independent, bodily infrastructure.
Second, while there are a variety of experts and providers talking about Cloud Computing, you're not going to find a singular definition. One man's cloud is another's hosted server farm. We're not going to claim our definitions are the final answer, but they are consistent with what you will find in the marketplace today and where it is likely to be tantalizing toward.
In our view, Cloud computing comes in a few flavors; group Clouds, inexpressive Clouds, and Multi-tenant Clouds.
Public Clouds have been with us for a while. If you use Gmail, Google Applications, Hotmail, or host your website with Microsoft (as Upi does), you're using Cloud computing. The hardware and applications are residing someplace else and you're sharing those resources with a lot of other people. You join together (typically over the internet) and make use of these services at dramatically lower cost than you could ever hope to duplicate them yourself. Think if we all had to run our own change servers for email or keep technicians on staff to preserve a small business website, not practical.
Private Clouds are the other end of the spectrum. A business has a group of servers and business applications that its various departments, operating units and sites all join together to. These connections can be over the internet, Vpn, local area networks, or wide area networks, it doesn't matter. The computing resources are centralized and every person in that business is using them. It also doesn't matter where these servers are, they can be in a company's data center, at a co-location data town owned by somebody else, or even running on hardware provided by a 3rd party in that company's data center. What makes the Cloud the Cloud in this case, versus just a central data center, is the nuances of how the servers, storehouse and networks are configured and interconnected to perform the benefits of Cloud computing.
Multi-tenant Clouds are the hybrid riposte and where we will truly start so see something radically separate from how we've traditionally belief of It. In this Multi-tenant environment, you're sharing resources, but think of it more as a car pool than a group bus. The Multi-tenant Cloud supplier subdivides the Cloud resources surrounded by its customers. This subdivision formula varies by supplier and is a key observation when a business goes seeing for these services. All the customers on the Cloud are sharing the big pool of resources but with "fences" and "swim lanes" and other methods of protection and control, buyer data and processing is separated and protected.
Lastly, you may also hear talk of Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Cloud computing is one type of IaaS. A hosted server model in which the supplier owns the equipment, hosts it at their data center, and provides the services to manage the infrastructure would also fall under the IaaS umbrella. The pricing model, availability, and flexibility would be separate than a Cloud, but its still infrastructure provided as a service vs. Physically delivered and owned or leased by you.
Why do I care?
Now that we've confused you and you're reaching for the aspirin bottle, let's take a second to say why a business should care about this. The riposte is three fold: Availability, Flexibility and Cost.
A properly engineered Cloud explication is highly available. Individual servers share the load with other servers and if one fails the other one picks up the slack. In theory, you would never touch any down time due to server failure so long as the Cloud itself still exists (remember the Cloud does reside on bodily devices and can be destroyed or incapacitated just like any bodily thing). Similarly, data storehouse is configured using Raid (not the bug spray) technologies that allow for redundancy of the data so that a singular hardware failure on the storehouse gadget won't bring your business to a halt. This is actually cool, but actually complex stuff that requires very experienced technical engineers to design, configure, build and maintain. In other words, don't try this at home unless you have a very talented staff.
Now, we just said the Cloud is highly ready unless something happens to the Cloud. This is not meant to be an oxymoron. The Cloud lives on servers and sits in a data town some place. That data town could come to be unusable; fire, weather destruction, extended power loss, loss of connectivity. If that occurs, your highly ready Cloud isn't so available. In this case, you whether need a original disaster rescue solution, or a supplier who offers a more robust explication such as data replication to a second Cloud in a second (distant) data center. With a replicated solution, you could quickly (think an hour or less not days) bring your systems back up on the second Cloud with tiny data loss from the point the first Cloud went puff.
Along with Availability, Cloud computing can supply a high degree of Flexibility. Since the Cloud is a pool of resources, a business could spin up new servers in minutes not days. No need to go procure a new piece of server hardware, wait for delivery, install it in a rack, join together it to your network, and load your system. In a Cloud environment, you should be able to just originate the new server environment on the already existing bodily infrastructure in a matter of minutes. Similarly, if you only need the environment for a short duration of time, say a test environment for some project, when you're done you can just turn it off and go back to using what you need without having an high-priced asset sitting there unused. For businesses with wide swings in processing demands due to seasonality, new stock begin or other business drivers, this flexibility can be very effective. Turn on the new servers for the peak holiday season, then turn them off in January and quit carrying that cost.
This then leads us to the third benefit, Cost. We already talked about the cost rescue from not having to have infrastructure sitting colse to for peak seasonal demand, but even without a seasonal inquire driver, studies have shown that as much as 80% of ready server capacity sits idol at any point in time. That means that on median your business has a huge whole of capacity (and investment) doing nothing most of the day/week/month/year.
With virtualization technologies, you can squeeze some of this excess capacity out by naturally sharing the servers among your own applications. A inexpressive Cloud would perform the same result except that you would have a 3rd party providing the platform to your business with perhaps greater efficiency and effectiveness than you might be able to perform with a tiny in-house It organization. Multi-tenant Cloud computing takes it one step added by allowing that sharing to be among multiple enterprises.
Ultimately, the true nirvana state will be when you pay for only what you use, a "Utility" model. The business isn't quite there yet so any Cloud you get today will have some excess built into it, but the direction is clear.
The end result is lower capital cost, lower software and maintenance costs, and lower operating costs. Add these direct cost savings to the intangible savings associated with high availability and less business disruption from unplanned outages, and the business case for tantalizing to a Cloud environment can be compelling.
How do I get there?
At the beginning of this Perspective, we said that there wasn't a singular definition of the Cloud. One man's Cloud is another's hosted solution. Therefore the trick in tantalizing to the Cloud is actually determining if that's what you're getting or is it just a more sophisticated hosted services solution. Not to say the latter is bad, just that the key thing to understand is what you're buying.
Therefore, ask these key questions:
1. What is/are the unit(s) of part that I would be billed for?
2. How do you conclude how many I need to start with?
3. How do you/I conclude if the whole is adequate for my needs now and as time goes on and my business changes?
4. In what increments can I procure added capacity as my business grows?
5. How often can I add/subtract capacity and what is the lead time?
6. What redundancy for the Cloud is offered and how do I collate what's right for my business?
The answers to these questions will help you quickly recognize if you're seeing at a Cloud.
In addition to determining the real service being offered, you'll need to do the same due diligence as any original hosting services contract; quote the providers processes for managing the service, visit the data centers and ensure they are adequately configured/secured, quote the providers service level agreements, and check references closely. Because of the shared nature of the Cloud, you'll also need to delve a tiny deeper into a few areas; protection and data protection, roles and responsibilities for supervision of the various layers of technology, and technology refresh and advancement approach and commitment. Finally, since you'll be tantalizing from where you are to a new environment, you'll need a good explanation and insight of the migration process; approach, checks and balances, time frames, your labor commitment, and costs. To move an business of any size is going to be a complex undertaking, make sure you and your supplier have a firm insight of what's entailed.
Summary:
To recap, in this Perspective we provided a definition for the Cloud and outlined three types (Public, inexpressive and Multi-tenant). We talked about the advantages of tantalizing to a Cloud environment and the key things to consider in tantalizing in that direction.
As we said, the belief of the Cloud is actually quite easy but the underlying technologies and their integration is quite complex. To originate a truly Multi-tenant environment with all of the protections and protection found on independent servers and the assurances of performance, availability, and redundancy required is a very complex undertaking. Selecting the right supplier with the expertise to do this is finally the key to achieving the promised benefits of the Cloud.
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