1. ‘Cloud’ promises to have given a new wisdom to the increasing
enterprise agility. The story doesn’t end here as unknowingly it has played an
inevitable role in our daily life since ‘Internet’ spearheaded. Whatever you might
use today at a click to flick – Facebook, Gmail, Dropbox, Skype, PayPal all are
healthy examples of cloud technology.
The biggest challenge for a savvy today is to describe ‘Cloud’ in the easiest way
– undoubtedly; which has made you come here.
Easiest Way to Understand Cloud
Computing
T.Veiluvanthal
Assistant Professor

2. Define
The most hellish part was to define the cloud with technological
scholars and professionals found difficult to interpret the ‘Cloud
Computing’ in a limited ‘word-pedia’ regardless there are standard
definitions of Cloud Computing. Let’s do it in an easier way:
Elementary
The cloud is just a mutation form of the Internet.
Cloud computing signifies storing and accessing data
and programs over the Internet instead of your
computer’s hard drive.
Cloud computing means storing and accessing data
and programs over the Internet instead of your
computer’s hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for
the Internet.

3. Technically
Cloud computing refers to an efficient method of
managing lots of computer servers, data storage and
networking.
The evolution of the term “cloud” can be preferred to
the anonymous nature of this technology’s framework; the
system works for users yet they really have no idea the
inherent complexities that the system utilizes.
Cloud is a new evolution of IT service delivery from a
remote location, either over the Internet or an intranet,
involving multi-tenant environments enabled by
virtualization.

4. Research
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network
access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers,
storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released
with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
Service Models
To understand broadly Cloud computing has multiple service models
like: SaaS, PaaS, NaaS, DbaaS, IaaS, DbaaS and many more. Though every model
has its own eminency the cloud computing has three major types of service
models: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

5. SaaS – Software as a Service
In simple this is a service which leverages business to roll
over the internet. SaaS is also called as “on-demand software”
and is priced on pay-per-use basis. SaaS allows a business to
reduce IT operational costs by outsourcing hardware and
software maintenance and support to the cloud provider. SaaS
is a rapidly growing market as indicated in recent reports that
predict ongoing double digit growth.
PaaS – Platform as a Service
PaaS is quiet similar to SaaS rather than SaaS been
offered through web the PaaS creates software, delivered over
the web.
PaaS provides a computing platform and solution stack as
a service. In this model user or consumers creates software
using tools or libraries from the providers. Consumer also
controls software deployment and configuration settings. Main
aim of provider is to provide networks, servers, storage and
other services.

6. IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
Infrastructure is the foundation of cloud computing.
It provides delivery of computing as a shared service reducing the
investment cost, operational and maintenance of hardware.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a way of delivering Cloud
Computing infrastructure – servers, storage, network and operating
systems – as an on-demand service. Rather than purchasing
servers, software, datacenter space or network equipment, clients
instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service on
demand.

7. On-demand self-service-
A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as
server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring
human interaction with each service provider.
The Agile Functionality of the System-
Possibilities of cloud solutions can be available to the system user in a
short period of time, if it is necessary. Let us suppose that our site is in the
Cloud and that the traffic, in terms of the number of visitors, is similar
every day. Then, let us suppose that one day, for some reason, the Web site
traffic rises by 100%. If the is site hosted on our own, private server, there
is a strong possibility for it to simply “go down” and stop working because
of software and hardware limitations. In such cases, Cloud dynamically
allocates necessary resources in order to ensure a smooth operation, and
when the flow decreases again, resources are automatically restored to its
original condition. The user is free to purchase additional resources and
opportunities in any quantity and at any time.

8. Wide range network access-
Implies widespread, heterogeneous network accessibility for thin,
thick, mobile and other commonly used compute mediums. System
capacities are available to customers through a network and can be
accessed from different devices such as desktop computers, mobile phones,
smartphones and tablet devices.
Allocation of resources-
Computer resources of providers are grouped in order to serve a large
number of simultaneous users. The mechanism of processing power
distribution, or the amount of memory, operates in such a way that the
system dynamically allocates these parameters according to customer
requirements. The users themselves have no control over the physical
parameters, i.e. resources location, but at some higher level of the system
customatisation, Cloud solutions can choose where their data will be stored
and processed (for example, geographical location of data centers).
Measured service-
Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by
leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to
the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth and active user
accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled and reported,
providing transparency for the provider and consumer.

9. Architectures
Cloud Computing architecture is developed with several cloud
components; Virtualization is the key in optimizing server resources, often
software noted previously known as VMware is utilized. To handle the massive
protocol Cloud is majorly divided into two major categories:
Front – End
Back – End
The viable ends are connected through a network, usually Internet. Let’s dive
into it understand it better:
Front-end – This is the part seen by the client, i.e. the computer user. This merges the
client’s network and applications used to access the cloud via a user interface such
as a web browser.
Back- End – The back end of the cloud computing architecture is the ‘cloud’ itself,
comprising various computers, servers and data storage devices.
Importantly; it is the responsibility of the back end to enable built-in security
mechanism, traffic control and protocols.
The server employs certain protocols known as middleware, which help the
connected devices to communicate with each other.

10. Pros
Say ‘Goodbye’ to costly systems: Cloud hosting enables the businesses to enjoy minimal
expenditure. As everything can be done in the cloud, the local systems of the employees have
very less to do with. It saves the dollars that are spent on costly devices.
Access from infinite options:
Another advantage of cloud computing is accessing the environment of cloud not only
from the system but through other amazing options. These options are tablets, IPad, netbooks
and even mobile phones. It not only increases efficiency but enhances the services provided to
the consumers.
Software Expense:
Cloud infrastructure eliminates the high software costs of the businesses. The numbers
of software are already stored on the cloud servers. It removes the need for buying expensive
software and paying for their licensing costs.
The cooked food:
The expense of adding new employees is not affected by the applications’ setup,
installation and arrangement of a new device. Cloud applications are right at the desk of
employees that are ready to let them perform all the work. The cloud devices are like cooked
food.

11. Lowers traditional servers’ cost:
Cloud for business removes the huge costs at the front for the servers of the enterprise. The extra
costs associated with increasing memory, hard drive space and processing power are all abolished.
Data Centralization:
Another key benefit of cloud services is the centralized data. The information for multiple projects
and different branch offices are stored in one location that can be accessed from remote places.
Data Recovery:
Cloud computing providers enables automatic data backup on the cloud system. The recovery of
data when a hard drive crash is either not possible or may cost a huge amount of dollars or wastage of
valuable time.
Sharing Capabilities:
We talked about documents accessibility, let’s hit sharing too. All your precious documents and
files can be emailed, and shared whenever required. So, you can be present wherever you are not!
Cloud Security:
Cloud service vendor chooses only the highest secure data centers for your information. Moreover,
for sensitive information in the cloud there are proper auditing, passwords, and encryptions.
Free Cloud Storage:
Cloud is the best platform to store all your valuable information. The storage is free, limitless and
forever secure, unlike your system.
Instantly Test:
Various tools employed in cloud computing permits you to test a new product, application, feature,
upgrade or load instantly. The infrastructure is quickly available with flexibility and scalability of
distributed testing environment.

12. Cons
Net Connection: For cloud computing, an internet connection is a must to access your precious data.
Low Bandwidth: With a low bandwidth net, the benefits of Cloud computing cannot be utilized. Somet
even a high bandwidth satellite connection can lead to poor quality performance due to high latency.
Affected Quality: The internet is used for various reasons such as listening to audios, watching videos o
downloading and uploading heavy files, printing from the cloud and the list goes on. The quality of C
computing connection can get affected when a lot of people utilize the net at the same time.
Security Issues: Of course, cloud computing keeps your data secure. But for maintaining complete secu
an IT consulting firm’s assistance and advice is important. Else, the business can become vulnerable
hackers and threats.Non-negotiable Agreements: Some cloud computing vendors have non-negotiab
contracts for the companies. It can be disadvantageous for a lot of businesses.
Cost Comparison: Cloud software may look like an affordable option when compared to an in-house
installation of software. But it is important to compare the features of the installed software and the c
software. As some specific features in the cloud software can be missing that might be essential for y
business. Sometimes you are charged extra for unrequired additional features.
No Hard Drive: As Steve Jobs, the late chairman of Apple had exclaimed “I don’t need a hard disk on m
computer if I can get to the server faster… carrying around these non-connected computers is byzant
comparison.” But some people who use programs cannot do without an attached hard drive.
Lack of full support: Cloud-based services do not always provide proper support to the customers. The
vendors are not available on e-mail or phones and want the consumers to depend on FAQ and online
community for support. Due to this, complete transparency is never offered.
Incompatibility: Sometimes, there are problems of software incompatibility. As some applications, tool
software connect particularly to a personal computer.
Fewer insights into your network: It’s true cloud computing companies provide you access to data like
CPU, RAM, and disk utilization. But just think once how minimal your insight becomes into your
network. So, if it’s a bug in your code, a hardware problem or anything, without recognizing the issue
impossible to fix it.
Minimal flexibility: The application and services run on a remote server. Due to this, enterprises using
computing have minimal control over the functions of the software as well as hardware. The applicat
can never be run locally due to the remote software.

13. Challenges
Meeting federal security requirements:Cloud vendors may not be familiar with security
requirements that are unique to government agencies, such as continuous monitoring and
maintaining an inventory of systems.
Reliability: In terms of reliability, it all comes down to picking a provider that is reputable and
proven. Understanding the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is crucial as some providers
guarantee a 100% network uptime rate and reimburse users for any downtime.
Moving everything to the cloud: Moving everything to the cloud can be a real challenge as,
while cloud is here to stay, it will not replace all traditional hosting or on-premise deployments.
Ensuring data portability and interoperability:To preserve their ability to change vendors in
the future, agencies may attempt to avoid platforms or technologies that “lock” customers into
a particular product.
Overcoming cultural barriers:Agency culture may act as an obstacle to implementing cloud
solutions.
Service Delivery and Billing: It is difficult to assess the costs involved due to the on-demand
nature of the services. Budgeting and assessment of the cost will be very difficult unless the
provider has some good and comparable benchmarks to offer. The service-level agreements
(SLAs) of the provider are not adequate to guarantee the availability and scalability.

14. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Salesforce
Launched 15 years ago, Salesforce has become a pioneer of the SaaS industry. Salesforce
is a leader in CRM. The extensive database knowledge is considered to be a goldmine for
building a robust business database.
Oracle
The second largest SaaS provider in the world behind Salesforce, they focus on selling
engineered systems rather than commodity hardware. Predominantly working in public and
retail sectors, they have a lot of power in marketing CRM, ERP and HCM. Oracle Fusion is
their flagship product, aimed at CRM and Financial services with Oracle’s Sales Cloud.
SAP
Aimed at larger to mid-sized businesses, SAP Business ByDesign is a complete
integrated suite that can run your whole enterprise – financials, human resources, sales
procurement, customer service, and supply chain. Latest Launch HANA is great for analytics
and has several large case deployments.
Rackspace
A leading provider of hosted servers, applications, and data storage. Rackspace offers the
advantage of picking and choosing a variety of software solutions and supporting them on
scalable, customized, managed platforms for the ultimate in service and reliability.
Google
Google is not only a huge player in the SaaS arena with its famous and popular Google
Docs application suite, the Internet powerhouse also hosts its own SaaS marketplace where
customers can shop a plethora of developers and applications to find the solutions they need for
their business.
Microsoft
This technology giant is a huge SaaS provider that supplies powerful software solutions
for government and enterprise customers. Windows Live, Office Live, Dynamics Live CRM
Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) are just

15. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Amazon Web Services – Elastic Beanstalk
Elastic Beanstalk is for deploying and scaling web applications which are developed on Java, .NET, PHP, PHP, Node.js, Pytho
Ruby, Go, and Docker. These will run on Apache servers as well as Nginx, Passenger and IIS. One of the big benefits is th
AWS is constantly adding new tools, so you are always likely to have the latest tools to hand.
Microsoft – Azure
As with Amazon, one of the key benefits is that Microsoft Azure supports any operating system, language, tool and framework
This clearly makes life a lot easier for developers.
Some of the languages and options that are available are, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby.
Another of the benefits of using Azure is that developers can use a Visual Studio for creating and deploying applications.
RedHat – OpenShift
RedHat offers a few different options for developers which consist of either hosted, private or open source PaaS projects.
The benefit of this is that at whatever level you are, RedHat has an option for you. For OpenShift Origin, the languages that ar
supported are Java EE6, Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl, MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. OpenShift Online and OpenShift
Enterprise also offer the same languages.
Google – App Engine
Google, as ever, is a powerful contender for one of the top spots as a PaaS provider. The company claims to already support
hundreds of thousands of developers and has an impressive record on uptime.
The App Engine supports many different languages and allows for integration to other technologies such as Hadoop, MongoD
and others.
Google is another company which abridging PaaS and IaaS so you get the best of both worlds.
IBM – Bluemix
IBM has an open source PaaS which is based on Cloud Foundry. The idea behind it is that the user will have greater security a
control.
Users’ can choose from third-party and community services to extend the functionality of apps. A useful benefit is that any
existing infrastructure that you have can be migrated to Bluemix.

16. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Amazon Web Services
Amazon is the standard bearer in the public IaaS space, as its paid-by-the-VM
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is both the market share and mindshare leader by a fa
big gap. It’s got a huge portfolio of services that run atop its Xen-based virtualized
infrastructure and Amazon keeps adding to those offerings while it lowers its price
IBM SoftLayer
IBM’s advantages in the cloud market are rooted in its comprehensive portfol
public, private and managed cloud products. But the hybrid focus is anchore
SoftLayer, the public cloud it acquired two years ago.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft’s Azure public cloud has been growing faster than any other
offering on the market. Microsoft has now solidly entrenched itself as the runner-u
market share behind Amazon Web Services.
Rackspace
Though Rackspace makes space in the niche category study reveals
Rackspace’s industrialized private cloud offerings are thoughtfully constructed, m
automated than most competing offerings, and operated in a fashion that al
Rackspace to deliver reliable, well-supported services at economical prices. Fin
crossed!
NTT Communications
NTT has a strong customer base in Asia to sell cloud services. And the fami
companies it belongs to brings built-in market opportunities and a large pa
network. NTT Com also has a long track record in managed hosting and man
security services, and can deliver these solutions in conjunction with Enterprise Clo

17. Future
Lastly let’ake it square, Growing recognition of economic and operational benefits and t
efficiency of cloud-computing model promise strong future growth. Cloud undoubtedly has kept
promising fate with CIOs relying much on the data security to the industry professionals a
murmuring to adopt Cloud Computing.
The recent economic recession saw hordes of companies take to cloud computing as a cost savi
strategy. Cloud computing came as a boon for companies during tough economic and financial clima
given that the technology can potentially slash IT costs by over 35%.
Promising growth in the market for cloud
Report states that the adoption of cloud to hit $250 billion by 2017. With that kind of grow
expected, it is no wonder that many are companies are rebranding anything that makes sense “as a servic
to get a piece of the pie.
Hybrid cloud adoption – The Game Changer
It’s expected that 50 percent of enterprises will have hybrid clouds by 2017. CIOs crafting well-thought-o
strategies that can include cloud. However, pure cloud implementations are the exception and not the ru
The hybrid cloud—a mix of on and off premises—offers the best of both worlds: a combination of strengt
allowing organizations to achieve the performance of on-premises solutions yet also the manageme
convenience of the cloud business model.
Innovations to redefine Cloud
Increased competition in the cloud space will give way to better products, services and innovation. Goi
through theories and memoirs of Moores, He writes that a vendor establishes a new product or service,
pace of innovation drops. Moore suggests that this occurs because companies need to help their clients ado
the new innovative offering. Therefore one can perceive that history has been symbolic to probe that ho
technologies can be just a mystic.

18. Conclusion
Economists say Moore’s Law is the reason our world has been
transformed by technology. Concluding, I perceive it is a necessity
to justify I am by no means one of those ‘zealots’ for Cloud purity,
nor am I suggesting we call customers or prospects out over its
misuse. Edifying a common nomenclature and understanding of its
key elements is critical in our business when assisting clients
achieve their desired end state. It is also important to note – not all
customers have sufficient business need to justify the investment
required to establish a full-blown cloud computing infrastructure
service model.