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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

What is 'Cloud Computing'

First question that anyone would ask is "What in the world is Cloud Computing". There is no standard definition of Cloud, though there are a few definitions floating around the web.
Google search of Cloud Computing, will give you some idea about what we are talking about.  My definition could be in the lines of  "On-demand pay-as-you-go Internet infrastructure/Platform/Application where you use only what you need, not a single byte more or single byte less. The support and Maintenance part is completely taken care by the service provider". 


Though above definition sounds more like outsourcing a set of  functions to a third party, Cloud Computing is quite different from outsourcing. Outsourcing is like a manufacturing company giving away its logistics operations to a third party vendor who takes care of getting in raw materials for the company and also carrying out the finished products. In terms of IT, outsourcing can be defined as "getting into a contract with the third party vendor who provide their resources for a specific period of time to do a specific work". In this case, the end product is still owned by the main company. Contracting company just helps the main company to perform its functions. But in case of cloud computing, the cloud takes care of your application & infrastructure. 


Salesforce is the pioneer in the cloud computing space. They started a decade back with the idea of providing CRM services to small companies which cannot offer enterprise softwares that has huge investment & maintenance cost. These small companies were forced to hire contractors to customize these big packages for their company policies & culture. Salesforce was a different approach.More like renting a real estate, rather than owning it.


Even though, a decade has passed, nothing has changed in this space. To make things worse, nowadays there are too many upgrades of software packages in short span of time and many of these software companies are blamed that they refuse to support the older versions, even before all the smaller companies can upgrade to the newer version. Upgrade cost is almost similar to buying a new software & the upgrades to software packages demanded these companies to upgrade their hardware as well. (Again cost).


Advantages of cloud:


1. Cost savings. It is mostly pay as you go. So no big initial investment. Companies need not have to think on long term benefits, before implementing. Say we have a software for $X. If X is as huge as one year IT investment of the company, most companies wouldn't have implemented the software during recession. Many companies were in the fear of bankruptcy and hence they had big concerns on investments on softwares, which in most cases don't have a resale value like a physical investment. On the other hand, cloud implementation doesn't have any initial implementation. 


2. Fast & Easy implementation: In most cases applications in cloud can be deployed in a 2-3 weeks timeframe which is unheard of, in case of traditional software implementations. This helps business to ramp up and equip themselves with the latest technology, as early as possible. 


3. Moving out of cloud is easier than moving out of traditional software implementations. I am talking about ramp down, when the business is not doing good. Huge investment for traditional software applications are already made and hence businesses are left with no options, but to live with those applications and also to pay for "the staff" to maintain it. In case of cloud, business can move away from cloud, the day they decide to stop using the service. (At least cloud applications today allow you to do this. In future, they may introduce clauses in agreement).


4. Defining the SLA for a cloud application is easier. SLA's are tough to measure when you deal with the IT staff within your company. But SLAs of cloud applications are universally accepted and hence are easy to measure. You clearly know, what you are going to get,before you get into it. Again, if you don't like it, getting out of cloud is very easy. 


5. Security & Disaster Recovery: Usual perception is that cloud is not secure. Though there has been successful attacks on cloud servers in the past, there is no data to prove that cloud servers are more likely to be hacked than the servers maintained by the internal IT team. Attack on cloud makes a news, attack on individual servers don't. That is the difference. As companies like Google move towards cloud, we can expect in the future that, cloud servers will be more secure than the servers of smaller companies. Same thought goes for disaster recovery. Bigger cloud providers will have more robust disaster recovery mechanisms, than the smaller companies.


I will touch upon the challenges facing cloud in the next post. I would be really be happy, if you can share your thoughts and make this more blog interactive. It will help everyone to learn. 

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Intro to this blog!!!

Unless you are living below a rock, you should have heard about the word 'Cloud Computing'. This blog is to give an introduction of Cloud Computing and also to put some thought about how Cloud Computing will help India INC. and Indian public in the next decade. We will also talk about what are the advantage that Indian IT companies have and how can they take advantage of the resources they have currently, to play this game of 'Cloud Computing'.

I am not an expert in this area. For that matter, no one is.I am reading a lot about this and have been watching this space for about 2-3 years now. I at some point of time, I look myself working for cloud based application in near future and the same with many of my Indian IT friends. I am planning to have 2-3 posts a week and I am also planning to keep them simple and small. 

So friends, are you ready for your journey into the world of Cloud Computing?