An Open Frontier
The skeptics of this new paradigm of computing sometimes trivialize by terming it as the old wine in a new bottle. After such a healthy discussion through the last six chapters, it may be enraging or disappointing. However, I shall argue differently. If a person could draw the popular attention and could increase the adoption of an old brand of wine substantially, I would call it an innovation! On a serious note, we must recognize the significant changes that have occurred not only in our approach to computing in solving social and business problems, but also helped underlying technologies and methods to reshape and evolve during the past few years.
We are now aware that cloud computing offers distinct advantages apart from just the cost component. We can scale our resources as per our changing requirements from time to time. This provides an instant availability of practically infinite amount of cost-effective and quality computing infrastructure at our disposal. As the provisioning and monitoring are done centrally, and resources are maintained redundantly in geographically-distributed locations, cloud model is capable of offering highly available and reliable IT resources to consumers. Moreover, perceived security threats are actually at a much lesser scale when we take into account the data stored and software used across different user devices in varied business cycles with traditional IT processes.
Being a model gaining momentum along with rapidly evolving technologies, cloud computing provides enormous opportunities and challenges to service providers, engineers, consultants, developers and researchers.
Now, let us look at some of the opportunities and challenges offered by cloud computing (figure 7.1).
Innovative Apps
Software application architects and developers have a bigger opportunity to leverage the scenario where they do not get engaged in setting up environment, database management and other nitty-gritty tasks of software cycle management. All these are made available along with cloud platform, and moreover these can be managed with either high-end tools, or a set of APIs. And, there is a great need for creating new Apps for different usages.
HTML5 and JavaScript are gradually inching towards being the de facto languages for building Apps that are compatible across different devices and operating systems. With such probable convergence and the ease of creating Apps using cloud APIs would definitely increase the number and quality of Apps in near future.
There are a few major areas where rapid developments are happening. People would prefer to manage home appliances and other tools remotely, and integrating varied activities from a single device. As we have pointed earlier too, context-aware technologies and location-based computing would be used predominantly for building new Apps.
On the providers’ side, there is a great demands on Apps to have better security controls, user management, cloud cost tracking, multi-currency support, audit controls and reporting, monitoring and alerting, auto-scaling, cloud bursting, backup management, and change management. In fact, further efforts are needed for unified cross-cloud management.
Security and Performance
A definite complaint that you would hear while talking about cloud computing is the security. In fact, periodic media flashes with sensational news about security breaches on leading cloud systems have strengthened such perceptions. A question mark is drawn on the capability of cloud vendors to ensure security for user data that are stored on their platforms. Moreover, the obvious consequence of storing private data on public cloud is seen as a perception of insecurity. Enterprises fear of taking on-premise data to public cloud where they share platform and resources with other enterprises or organizations. To let such perception be handled with our mundane minds, let us discuss an interesting example.
During 16th century, Golconda fort near Hyderabad, India, was one of the strongest forts which remained undefeated for long. However, the fort cannot stand the minimal warfare tactics of today. So, the parameters of security evolve as the technology and offense tactics improve or change. This implies that "being secured" is a relative perception that will change with time, and cannot be absolute. Other aspect of this example is how Moghul King Aurangzeb won over the Golconda fort. The history says the chieftain in charge of the door of fort opened it for the attackers in the middle of night in exchange of bribe and a promise of the throne. This aspect points to a situation where security was easily compromised by the people in charge, and it is due to their irresponsibility or intention. Thus the phrase of "being secured" is a perception we live with, and is not an absolute thing.
I believe that the above simple example tells the deeper story about security in general. The same can well be applied to IT security. Major threats come from within the organization; and the perception of being secured must be conveyed well by the provider. At the same time, the technical aspects of security must be taken care of; and adequate amount of research, monitoring and upgrade effort and cost must be dedicated for the purpose. In short, the sense of security must be retained among the users, and all technical and strategic efforts must be made on vendor side.
And now about performance. The major performance concerns when one or more components of cloud system fail to be available or accessible. This can be a simple loss of connectivity of central cloud components from the user device, or can be a situation where a particular App fails to respond successfully while fulfilling a user request. We have already discussed about handling such disconnected operations in Chapter 4; and this is an active area of development and research.
Standardization and Interoperability
Through Chapter 3, while making our point in favor of cloud computing, and in chapter 5, while discussing about the factors influencing cloud adoption, we have spoken at length of requirements of complying to the process of standardization of technologies and tools involved, and to facilitate data interoperability across platforms. However, complexity creeps into making decisions about specific vendors and usage patterns around different cloud systems due to varied yet less-compatible technology standards offered by respective vendors. Also, a growing set of consumers get locked with respective cloud platforms after they choose to use those. Similar is the case for solution providers who develop their solutions around a particular cloud ecosystem. Though the ecosystem around each offering seems to be expanding, the fears of being locked to particular vendors and lack of simplicity during various usage scenarios loom large on the consumers’ side.
When we scan different enterprises, a clear division of interest groups for cloud adoption is seen among those who are already using legacy IT systems and others who are new. For existing IT users, the major task in the process of migration lies in transferring data to or using the data on the new ecosystem. This task can only be made redundant if the new system can facilitate interoperability and loose-coupling with different vendor platforms.
The current trend suggests consolidation in Industry along the NIST definition.
Accessing Devices and Their Software
Unfortunately, different vendors have approached hardware and software development in their own stride by focusing on creating tightly integrated platforms and Apps around those. This discourages end-users who have to adapt to new usage models each time they choose a new App or device from a new vendor. The technology landscape has been divided into virtually isolated monolithic ecosystems similar to farming lands split into small pieces through family inheritance.
Though there may not be any quick change in this scenario, we expect a standard App usage model across devices, and easy integration and porting between different platforms and devices in near future.
Datacenter Technologies and Cloud Toolkits
We have discussed about datacenters and the relevant technologies in our discussion in Chapter 4. While speaking on the changing demands from datacenters and their users, we have emphasized on two seemingly contradicting objectives like better reliability and lesser cost. But this is the reality; and there is a need to improve on technological aspects to achieve these competing goals.
The future innovations in this front will see emphasis on robust physical infrastructure along with higher-level of automation on infrastructure delivery cycle. This includes further development in cloud toolkits apart from other infrastructure related components.
Cost and Availability of Bandwidth
It would be deceiving if we do not account for the available bandwidth on the side of end-users and the cost involved. It is of no use if we end up spending more for bandwidth even though the cloud resources are available at cheaper cost. Thus there is a great requirement for technological advancements that will facilitate lowering the bandwidth costs and increasing the availability of higher bandwidth for end-users.
Conclusion
We are now heading towards the end of this book. We have discussed about cloud computing and the challenges/opportunities it has created for us. In fact, it is an open frontier in the realm of our technological endeavor.
Ubiquity of information technology and multitude of usage scenarios on one hand, and issues of consistency, availability and security on the other make this area an interesting study. As enormous effort has been made from different quarters to bring benefits of IT to global populace, it is pertinent to understand this new paradigm in detail; and it will enable us to adopt solutions in rightful manner, and also to maximize the benefits.
In spite of significant hypes, cloud computing is not an overnight phenomenon. Rather, it has taken several years to reach its current state through complex interplay of demands by users and innovations by service providers to meet the expectations from users. Though it has received wide visibility and have started establishing itself as an inseparable way of IT consumption, the evolution is still on; and more surprising impacts from this amazing computing paradigm cannot be ruled out.
Now my take…
Do not be limited in your thinking about the existing technologies or even their conceptual frameworks. Rather, we must be bold enough to appreciate the ground realities about the current state of progress, to extend the horizon to make technologies usable, and to bring newer technologies into the fold.