Introduction
There are a number of seemingly-intriguing clichés associated with cloud computing. A marketing person cleverly claims that their product is cloud-based whereas the prospect unwittingly listens to hide his ignorance. You might have come across such situations, or will soon see such funny and unreasonable ones unfolding in front of your eyes. This is pure hype, the unusual expectations that ride over this new paradigm of computing. On the other hand, cloud computing is receiving wider acceptance, and new usable products are making their way with each passing day. These happenings have brought the issues associated with the current state of cloud computing, and the advantages it offers to the fore.
In this book, we shall review various aspects of cloud computing and its usages, and shall understand the challenges and opportunities it offers. After a general introduction about this computing paradigm in the first chapter, we shall discuss the actual definition in Chapter 2. We shall then go on to discuss the famous Hype Cycle vis-à-vis the realistic proposition that cloud computing offers in Chapter 3. Remaining portion of the book will cover the technologies involved (Chapter 4), the business models around cloud computing (Chapter 5), and finally its role in reshaping our individual, and collective, behaviors in recent times (Chapter 6). We shall end with a discussion about the opportunities and challenges that cloud computing offers (Chapter 7).
Moving forward with our plan to review the current status as the part of our general introduction, let us first discuss the pervasive nature of this term worldwide.
Cloud Everywhere
One day, I wanted to know how cloud computing has affected people using Internet. It may not be the best way; but certainly, an obvious way would be to test the search counts on Google. I was amazed by the result (figure 1.1).
The Google search with the phrase "cloud computing' returned about 129,000,000 results. The traffic surge is almost three times more than the average traffic scale (the scale based on the average worldwide traffic for the search term in all years), and this can be taken as an indicator of the popularity of cloud computing among general population.
I am not advocating the overwhelming acceptance of this computing paradigm by IT users just from the fact that there is an upswing in Google searches. Well, there are many things, which are popular on search engines; and it is difficult to ascertain the rationale behind. This index is an example rather of something that has attracted the attention worldwide; and encourages us to look into this further.
Trends We Live with
We have already given a couple of examples that exemplify the degree of hype surrounding cloud computing. And now, we shall provide a few practical examples that will illustrate the indispensability of cloud computing in present times. These will also provide an indicator of the acceptance of this computing paradigm across different categories of IT users.
Communication services like Gmail, Skype, WebEx, etc. (without bias towards any company, of course) have become so popular that many of us use these cloud services without knowing the details of their actual provisioning and management, and above all, about the much larger infrastructure behind these services.
Websites like Netflix, Bigflix, and Amazon Prime provide subscription-based access to thousands of videos by streaming these directly from their respective cloud infrastructures. Services like YouTube and Vimeo have revolutionized the way video sharing and promotion can happen. For example, regional scores like ‘Kolaveri Di’ could become an overnight hit across the globe just due to such robust cloud services that powered the online social media. The rapid accumulation of crowd-sourced content, a process that is considered as the part of Web 2.0 wave, has resulted in establishing major social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
It is not just about our personal and social activities. We use Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, and Salesforce.com CRM (Customer Relationship Management) among others to carry out our general business activities. These applications have enabled us to access and manage our data while we are on move, and have almost eliminated the upfront cost of IT in our business.
I would like to point to another emerging area where the use of cloud computing has become inevitable. This is about controlling and managing devices and sensors remotely. This, of course, has an utility across different user categories. Individual consumers prefer to have an eye over their homes, and to control their home appliances when they are away – the homes are fitted with cameras that are linked to a cloud for streaming the videos on demand to the owner of household, and also to provide conditional alerts based on continual processing of images received from those cameras. Such computing scenarios are also applied in many areas like road traffic control, public security management, astronomical data processing, and environmental studies, etc.
An interesting example where the practical benefits have been reaped through the adoption of cloud computing is the Sharp Community Medical Organization, a non-profit group of 5000 independent physicians in San Diego County, California. They have leveraged a healthcare collaboration cloud where patients coordinate their care across physicians. The organization is now positioning to reward physicians when patients stay healthy. This example emphasizes the use of cloud services in social sectors. In fact, governments across the world adopt cloud services to avail benefits to their citizens faster, and to reduce the latency in bringing development to the respective regions (Chapter 6). Another feather in cap, adequate to generate further interests in studying about this new paradigm!
Of course, there are happenings that can also be disappointing. A big chunk of early adopters carrying unfulfilled expectations are getting upset. On the other hand, product developers and service providers have made it a point to associate cloud computing to virtually anything they offer, and refer to the name of cloud computing if their application or content is located at a central location and is accessed elsewhere. This makes our life more complex.
What's in a Name?
There is quite a bit of effort to trace the first use of the term 'cloud computing'. Though the reference of the name ‘cloud’ or even ‘cloud computing’ was not intended for exactly the same thing that we talk about these days, they can be used synonymously.
The first use of ‘cloud’ can be traced to an academic article at MIT, “The Self-governing Internet: Coordination by Design”, where it referred to a large distributed cluster of computer networks. Later a company, NetCentric Corporation that used to provide "carrier-class Internet fax technology," applied for trademark under application serial number 75291765 in 1998; but later abandoned it.
The word cloud was also used in an article, “An Internet Critic Who Is Not Shy About Ruffling the Big Names in High Technology”, published in the New York Times, on April 09, 2001, to refer to the large network of computers. In this article, the author proposed that the Internet may be treated as a 'cloud' of computers.
However, the term cloud computing closest to what we refer to today, came to public when Eric Schmidt of Google used it to describe the software and server architecture as a service as envisaged by his company while talking to Danny Sullivan in the Search Engine Strategies Conference on August 09, 2006. Later Amazon used the term along with its product offerings, EC2 web services. What followed then became the notion that made it an inseparable form of computing, be in business, scientific or even for personal usages.
An Historical Perspective
As per the discussion in the last section about the initial usages of the term 'cloud computing', it only amounts to less than two decades. However, the sense of such computing model was founded long back - in the sixties when J.C.R. Licklider, one of the proponent of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), introduced the idea of an "intergalactic computer network". In fact, the vision was to create an interconnected network to access program and data at any site from anywhere else on the globe, which was much like our current understanding about cloud computing.
Similarly, an American computer scientist, John McCarthy, is widely credited for proposing in sixties about the delivery of computation as an utility like a service bureau, a company which provides business services for a fee.
In fact, the evolution of cloud computing had begun since then. The grid computing had led the effort during the early period. Later, entrepreneurs began to exploit similar computing models in business scenarios as people started using internet bandwidth in their day-to-day life. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning a significant effort by the IT industry during the last decade of the 20th century, if we don’t mention about the ASP (Application Service Provider) model where service providers kept the software rights with themselves, and rented out the software applications at the client-side. But then we were way behind the model that we called cloud computing.
The early adopter was Salesforce.com, which started delivering the CRM application in Software as a Service (SaaS) model, a model where a software application is delivered and managed centrally by the service provider, and is only available for use by consumers, who own their data and not the software. In the year 2006, when Amazon and Google started delivering their software and architecture as services, IT services got associated with large-scale delivery of computation, in terms of both program and data. All these comprise the basic tenet behind the evolution of the new paradigm of computing that consequently culminated into what we called 'cloud computing'.
Drawing Analogies
It is quite tricky to draw similarity between a bull and a horse even though they have something in common - they are mammals! Well, if that would serve the purpose of gaining insight into our object of study, it should be fine.
Let us consider a much cited example of travelling on an airplane. We could argue that one would prefer to purchase an aircraft, hire a pilot and crew, and also build the entire airport infrastructure to plan his or her flight schedule. Though a miniature percentage of population can still adopt this path, the general opinion will ridicule the proposition. People would rather avail similar, yet just adequate facilities, by buying a ticket with a fee from an airline. The airline company adopts a service model where the company is responsible to manage expensive assets, and to recruit and manage crew while offering services to passengers at a fee that is far below the capital investment and operation costs. Here, a passenger can avail service at a much lower cost compared to the earlier model of having a dedicated aircraft. At the same time, the airline company does profitable business by offering services to the large number of passengers. A win-win situation for both sides.
We can also discuss another popular example to bring in various important points to establish analogies with cloud computing better. This is about electricity that we consume daily at our homes, offices, and manufacturing plants.
The process of power generation, and building and maintaining its distribution network are big-scale activities in terms of both engineering and management. However, back home, we are neither concerned nor make ourselves aware of the entire supply-chain and the complexities involved in the process. We are not worried about the broader scale of operation or the costs involved. We are rather happy to use as it suites our requirements and budget; and we pay as per metered-usage.
People compare cloud computing to such service models. Well, yes it is correct up to this. Cloud computing proposes a large-scale computing system (hardware, network and software) that an IT vendor would establish and manage while providing all of these as services with a fee. But then, going further, it is a different service model, and it has its own unique characteristics and delivery mechanisms.
Need to Understand Better
The review of the current trends of cloud computing along with historical perspectives, has provided us a sense of significance about this new computing paradigm.
While it is easy to be carried away by hypes, a proper understanding will enable us to adopt the solutions in rightful manner and to maximize its benefits. This is our task in the next chapter.